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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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THE SILENT SE 

H IRovel 


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NEW YORK 

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1892 





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THE SILENT SEA 




CHAPTER I. 

As Miss Paget left the library, after seeing that her father’s arm-chair 
was in the right position and the Venetian blinds adjusted according to 
the morning light, she glanced at the huge bronze clock that stood on a 
huge bronze stand in the hall, and saw that it was only half-past nine. 
At ten she expected a visitor, and ever since she awoke at half-past five 
she had been so preoccupied with the thought of his arrival that more 
than once before this she had made quite sure the hour was at last about 
to strike. 

Seeing that she was in error, the lady went back to the library. It was 
a handsome, large room, lined with dark oaken bookcases from ceiling to 
floor, relieved at intervals with arched recesses lined with mirrors, before 
which stood vases containing small palms and other evergreen shrubs. 
This was an arrangement that, like many others which characterized the 
house, had been carried out according to Miss Paget’s own design after 
she became an heiress and bought Lancaster House. All the people who 
visited this mansion thought it was a happy contrivance to relieve the 
severity of so learned-looking a room with the comparative frivolity of 
mirrors and foliage. Miss Paget shared the opinion, and often had the 
shrubs changed, so that the effect did not sink into one of those fore- 
gone conclusions that after a time make no further claim on the eye. 
But neither the aesthetic nor the intellectual aspects of the chamber drew 
a glance or a thought from her at this moment. She had merely returned 
to see whether there was anything more she might do to anticipate her 
father’s wants. She did not wish to be called away at a critical moment 
from an interview to which she looked forward with more anxiety than 
she was willing to admit even to herself. For some time back her father 
had got into the habit of depending on her to guard his notes from stray- 
ing and his authorities from being misplaced, in addition to exercising a 
sedulous care as to his physical well-being. 

Mr. Paget was an ex-professor of the dead languages, and a man whose 
1 


2 


THE SILENT SEA 


mental horizon was bounded by illusions. Thus, he firmly believed that 
he was of a painfully sensitive temperament, and that he was devoting 
the leisure which now embraced his whole life to the cause of unen- 
dowed research. In reality his sensitiveness went no deeper than an ex- 
cessive antipathy to everything he found disagreeable. As for his studies, 
they were very versatile; and resulted now and then in one of those com- 
pilations that are widely reviewed, sometimes bought, and occasionally 
read. It is well known that in Australia an M.A. of Cambridge can al- 
ways pass for a man of great erudition, as long as he refrains from ex- 
plaining wherein his learning consists. As most of the people with whom 
he comes in contact are profoundly indifferent on the point, there is not 
much temptation for him to take society into his confidence in the mat- 
ter. And thus it was that Mr. Paget was invariably spoken of as a man 
of colossal parts, of profound research, of wide and disinterested learn- 
ing. As a matter of fact, he was a man of v/ide reading and some cult- 
ure, with the smallest modicum of original capacity, and a constitutional 
disinclination to real effort. 

But the reality of things has often no perceptible infiuence on the 
masquerade they cut in the tragi-comedy of life. And so it behooved 
Miss Paget to take her father and his beliefs as seriously as her own 
identity and the vagaries of the climate to which she had returned after 
travelling with him for nearly two years in the Old World. 

“ It is Egyptology that papa is so much interested in just now. . . . 
He will like to have these big German books near him,” she thought, 
placing certain volumes on the pedestal table. Then she consulted the 
thermometer that stood upon it, and seeing this registered only sixty-nine 
degrees, she thought it prudent to ring for the housemaid and ask her to 
put a little more coal on the fire. After that she went into the drawing- 
room and took a strip of crewel-work out of a little Eastern basket full 
of soft bright skeins of filoselle and balls of pale yellow floss silk. She 
sat on a low rocking-chair, threaded her needle, and put a tiny silver 
thimble on her white tapered finger. As soon as she was equipped in 
this way for serious and sustained industry, she dropped the strip of 
crewel-work in her lap and leaned back in an engrossing reverie. It is 
not easy to render a reverie int6 speech. The best and most that can be 
done is to give a free translation of the thoughts that follow one another 
in swift or slow succession. 

‘‘A girl — no, a woman of twenty-nine and a bit — and a young man 
six months short of twenty-one. It is a story ready made for old gossips 
and old friends — one of the situations for which the comedians lie in 
wait — and yet how little I would care if I were only sure. . . . But 
don’t I know well how it was from beginning to end?” 

Arrived at this point in her musings, a slow smile broke over Miss 


THE SILENT SEA 


3 


Paget’s face. It all came up before her like a picture, the first time she 
and her fellow-passenger of less than twenty-one summers had spoken to 
each other. It was the third day after leaving Plymouth, and she was 
half reclining on a couch in the big saloon full of gilding and mirrors 
and velvet-covered impossible chairs. Enter a tall young man, with coal- 
black hair and dark-blue Irish eyes, searching for some missing object. 

“ Is it this book you are looking for?” she asked, holding up a volume 
of poems. 

It was, but he begged her to keep it if she had been reading it. 

“ I never read poetry,” she answered, and the next moment she was 
sorry for having told the truth. He looked so undisguisedly amazed. 
She remembered having glanced languidly at the title-page, and seeing 
“Y. Fitz-Gibbon, from his mother,” written in an elegant hand. ‘‘A 
boy of this age always thinks a woman who is quite different from his 
mother must be a monster,” she thought. 

“ Not on board ship, I suppose you mean,” he said, drawing near her. 
Then he added, not waiting for an answer : ‘‘ I hope this rough weather 
has not made you ill, like most of the other ladies ?” 

“No, I should be quite well,” she answered, “if it were not for the 
magnificent mummies of Dehr-el-Bahari.” 

He opened his eyes wide, and then laughed the ready, ringing laugh 
of a light-hearted boy. He had half an hour before overheard an im- 
pressive description from her father of this subject for the third time 
since coming on board. Miss Paget hardly expected that he would un- 
derstand the allusion or take it all in so quickly. She spoke, as she rarely 
did, on the spur of the moment, finding some relief in a spontaneous con- 
fession from the strained feeling of irritation the subject had begun to 
produce. 

“ You see, it is really a very important discovery, and papa is so much 
interested in these things,” she said apologetically. 

“Yes; and these being in family groups of from six or seven, each 
mummy with a valuable manuscript inside him,” said the young man, 
his eyes dancing with merriment. 

“ Oh, for Heaven’s sake ! don’t you begin, too !” she said, raising her 
hands imploringly. They were good friends from that moment. He 
declared she was malingering by stopping in the saloon, when there was 
such a fresh breeze blowing and the sea one mass of immense green 
waves fringed with foam. They found a sheltered corner in which they 
established their deck-chairs, and when they were tired of talking they 
watched the waves. The weather was very rough till they got into the 
Mediterranean. During this time Mr. Paget was mostly in his own 
cabin. With the exception of his daughter, hardly a lady was to be seen 
on deck. All conspired to make the new acquaintances into intimate 


4 


THE SILENT SEA 


friends. Miss Paget was slightly acquainted with the young man’s 
mother, though oblivious of his existence till they met on board the 
Mogul. 

And then an unparalleled event in Miss Paget’s history took place. 
She fell in love, absolutely and heartily, with the young man whom she 
had from the first treated as a boy, to whom a woman of her age could 
talk with the frank kindliness of an elder sister. For a time she resisted 
the conviction with wondering incredulity. Even now she tried to make 
herself believe that her affections were not so very deeply pledged. 

‘‘ I always liked nice boys,” she mused. ‘‘ Their faces are not spoiled 
by cynical airs of knowingness, or of being used up, or any of the dis- 
agreeable tell-tale lines that make the faces of male creatures disagree- 
able to look on as they advance in life. . . . And what fun and good 
talks we had in those long, charmed nights, flooded with white moon- 
light, as we glided through the Mediterranean and up the Eed Sea. . . . 
And then the delicious excursions together at the ports of call, among 
the crowds of Arabs, Mohammedans, and Parsees, and rascally traders. 
Shall I ever forget the king cocoa-nut we drank in the fruit-market at 
Colombo, and the furious rush back to the quay, in a double ’ricksha, 
laden with white ivory elephants ? White elephants — were these a good 
omen ? Then came the last evening, when we sighted Kangaroo Island. 
I felt the tears rising fast to my eyes. ... I suppose they got into ray 
voice as I said, ‘ I am so sorry the voyage has come to an end !’ 

“ ‘Are you really sorry ?’ he said, bending so as to see my face better. 

“ ‘ But, of course, we need not give up being friends,’ I added. I 
should not have said it. 

“ ‘ Are we to be only friends, then ?’ he said ; and hardly waiting to 
think what I said, I answered, 

“ ‘ Why, what more could we be?’ 

“ Still less should I have said that. . . . And yet it was an exquisite 
moment, come what may, when he told me that he loved me . . . that he 
wanted a deeper and a firmer bond than friendship. I can always recall 
him as he looked then . . . the sort of lover that girls dream and rave 
of in their teens. . . . Yes, he looks young, even for his age — not a line 
in his face, not a blurred contour ; the perfect mouth, and white sculpt- 
ural lids. 

“It isn’t, of course, such a very unheard-of thing for a woman to 
marry a man nine or ten years younger than herself. Only, when men 
are insignificant or commonplace, when they have plebeian noses and 
small pale , eyes and sandy whiskers, what does it matter how young 
they are ? . . . But Victor, with superb good looks and boyish youth- 
fulness ! It isn’t that I feel old.” 

Miss Paget rose and looked at herself with a keen scrutiny in one of 


THE SILENT SEA 


5 


several square panels of mirror that were let into an ebony cabinet near 
her. Notwithstanding her twenty-nine years and a “ bit,” her appear- 
ance was exceedingly attractive. She was over the middle height, with 
a slender upright svelte figure. She had dark eyes and hair, and well- 
formed features. Her forehead was rather low ; the mouth a trifle wide. 
But she had such exquisite teeth that this was hardly a defect, more 
especially when she smiled. In talking she often did so, the predomi- 
nant expression of her face being humorous. She had beautiful hands 
and feet, and was always extremely well dressed. 

There was a knock at the door, and a servant announced Mr. Victor 
Fitz-Gibbon.” If Miss Paget had seen her own face as she turned to 
meet the young gentleman announced, she would have perceived that, 
after all, one’s face in a tete-a-tete with one’s self is never seen at its best. 
We may love ourselves sincerely — some of us are happy enough to do 
so — yet the sight of our own cheeks and eyes never makes them flush 
or brighten as they spontaneously do at the sight of even a foe. 

Needless to say, this was no foe who stood holding Miss Paget’s 
hands, and looking at her with a bright smile. 

‘‘It is good of you to let me come so early, Helen !” 

“And it is good of you to want to come.” 

“ Oh, as for that, my visit is not so very disinterested. You have not 
forgotten why I asked leave, when we parted, to come this morning ?” 

“But then, you know, it is two days since we parted on the Mo- 
gulp 

“Well, what of that?” 

“And two days on land, away from the shoreless waves and moon- 
light on the waters — ” 

“ You are going to say something horrid — I see it in your eyes. 
Don’t, Helen !” 

“ Well, I will not. But I have been sitting here for ages, going over 
it all. . . . Oh, Victor, it is better not. Don’t tempt me.” 

“ But that’s just what I will — all I know. Helen, can you say hon- 
estly you don’t care for me ?” 

“ No, I cannot. I care for you a great deal — but — ” 

Suddenly, in spite of her apparent efforts to keep them back, the 
tears rose in Miss Paget’s eyes — rose and overflowed, so that she was 
forced to wipe them away repeatedly. 

“ I am an ungrateful cat to cry at you in this way,” she said, smiling 
through her tears. 

“ You are not crying at me, Helen. . . . You are crying because some- 
thing troubles you. Won’t you tell me what it is?” 

“ I would in a moment — only it is too ridiculous.” 

“ But, you know, we agreed many times on the Mogul that we liked 


6 


THE SILENT SEA 


ridiculous things better than gold, or wisdom, or fine society, or good 
books.” 

Yes, when they are ridiculous things about other people. . . . But 
. . . well, we were always good comrades — I will tell you : I cried be- 
cause I am so old.” 

So old? How absurd ! Just look at yourself.” 

They were still standing where they met, in front of that ebony cabi- 
net whose mirrors afforded so many opportunities for seeing the reflec- 
tion of one’s face and form. But Miss Paget shrank from the ordeal. 
She resumed her seat on the rocking-chair, and motioned Victor to an 
arm-chair near her. 

“ Is it that you think I’m too young to know my own mind, Helen ?” 
asked the young man. 

“You may know it just now. . . . But in a year — even in a few 
months — Oh, Victor, I am afraid !” 

There was real emotion in the lady’s voice, yet her looks and words 
were not free from calculation. She knew that her upward, appealing 
glance, her bright dark eyes dimmed with tears, her doubts and hesita- 
tion, would not really rebuff her young suitor. And her consciousness 
of having purposely led him on to make a declaration of love rendered 
her all the more anxious to make him feel that she was not too lightly 
won. 

“ Then I’ll have courage for both of us,” said Victor. 

“ Yes, reckless courage belongs to early youth.” 

“I promise you on my honor to grow older every day,” returned the 
young man buoyantly. 

A wistful little smile on the lady’s face warned him this argument 
was a two-edged weapon, and he hastened to add, 

“ And, faith. I’ll grow wise faster even than I put on years.” 

“ Let us talk of something else for a little, Victor. How does it feel, 
getting back to enter on a kingdom ?” 

“It feels as if Uncle Stuart and I would fight like the Kilkenny cats 
if we have much to do with each other. . . . But, Helen, do you remem- 
ber my telling you of an old house in North Terrace, with a beautiful 
garden round it, that my mother used to be so fond of ?” 

“Oh, yes— -Lindaraxa. Mrs. Sedley, my old friend Mrs. Tillotson’s 
youngest daughter, lived in it at one time.” 

“Well, it is to be sold ; I want to buy it for my mother, and tell her 
nothing^ about it till she returns. I wish you would come and have a 
look at it with me — ” 

There was a sound of voices at the door. The handle was turned, 
and a large matronly-looking lady, something more than middle-ao*ed' 
bustled in. ° ' 


THE SILENT SEA 


7 


“My dear, I felt sure that if I came early enough I should find you at 
home,” she said, kissing Miss Paget in an emphatic way. Then she 
made a rapid descent on Victor, seizing both his hands. 

“ My dear boy, how delighted I am to see you ! I have a thousand 
questions to ask you, and to congratulate you on your good fortune — 
though, of course, it was a dreadful pity you were not in time to see 
your poor dear Uncle Shaw. Where did you get the sad news 

“ Not till I reached Albany.” 

“And your dear mother, how long is she to stay in England?” 

“ Probably for six months.” 

“ Well, and she’ll find you with quite a fortune of your own. My 
dear. Pm afraid you’ll turn all the young ladies’ heads, and, really, don’t 
you think it’s time you stopped growing ?” 

“I haven’t grown any for two years, Mrs. Tillotson,” said Victor, col- 
oring, half vexed and half amused at the imputation. 

Miss Paget, though as a rule very self-possessed, also showed slight 
signs of confusion. Mrs. Tillotson, however, was one of those who go 
through life much too immersed in affairs to see what is going on under 
their eyes. 

“Not for two years, my dear boy?” she cried, looking at Victor with 
beaming eyes, while she drew off her tight-fitting pale-blue kid gloves, 
pulling them off like the skin of a banana, and disclosing very white, 
plump hands, each finger loaded with costly rings up to the first joint. 

“You see, my dear Helen, I mean to stay for a good long chat this 
time; we had only a few seconds together yesterday afternoon, and 
there is something I want to consult you about.” This was in a sort of 
half-aside to Miss Paget; then, as if there had been no interruption in 
her discourse with him, Mrs. Tillotson turned to Victor, saying, 

“ You surely don’t mean that you were over six feet high at seven- 
teen ?” 

“ You are figuring me out nearly two years younger than I am,” re- 
turned Victor, twirling the points of his young moustache. 

“ Oh, dear ! with what alarming speed boys and girls grow up ! 
Haven’t you noticed that, Helen ?” 

“ But they are much more interesting grown up ; don’t you think 
so?” answered Miss Paget, smiling and trying to look unconcerned. 

“Well, I don’t know. They are safe over measles and chicken-pox; 
but then they begin to fall in love, and that’s just as bad — often more 
dangerous.” 

“But don’t you think it’s rather pleasanter?” asked Victor, smiling, 
though mentally he decided that Mrs. Tillotson had the most infatuated 
tongue of any old woman in the universe. 

“Now, Victor, tell me the truth,” said Mrs. Tillotson solemnly. “Did 


8 


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you leave the Mogul, in your motherless condition, without getting mto 
some sort of entanglement? Helen, do look how the boy blushes! 

Miss Paget, instead of looking, stooped to pick up her crewel-work 
and restore it to the basket. 

“You know,’’ continued Mrs. Tillotson, “the Mogul is noted even 
among the R and 0. boats for the number of engagements that get 
made on her. To be sure, very few of them come to anything. 

Victor glanced at his watch and rose to go. 

Must you leave us?” cried Mrs. Tillotson j *^and I ve heard so little 
of your dear mother. I kept thinking of her as I walked across the 
square, and then, when I came in, here were you 1 Isn t that what they 
call theosophy, or something occult ?” 

“ Oh, I should call it friendship 1” returned Victor good-humoredly. 

At last he extricated himself from the embarrassing coils of Mrs. Til- 
lotson’s random talk. As he was leaving, he said to Miss Paget with un- 
blushing gravity, 

“ By the way, may I look at that picture in the dining-room we were 
talking about ?” 

Miss Paget looked at him inquiringly. As her eyes met his a charm- 
ing blush overspread her face. Then she asked Mrs. Tillotson to excuse 
her absence for a few minutes. When they were fairly in the dining- 
room she turned to Victor with laughing eyes. 

“ Now, you brazen boy, what picture do you mean ?” 

“You,” he answered boldly. “Did you think I was going to be 
cheated out of even asking when I might see you again? Look here, 
Helen, can you come and look over Lindaraxa with me to-morrow ?” 

“Yes, I can.” 

“ At what hour ?” 

“ Oh, morning will be the best time. It is my day at home to-mor- 
row. Say from eleven to twelve.” 

“ Thank you so much ; and in the meantime you will make up your 
mind to give me a definite answer to-morrow ?” 

“ What sort of answer do you think I am going to give ?” said Miss 
Paget, smiling somewhat nervously. 

“ Why, a nice Christian little answer, that it takes only three letters to 
spell.” 

“ But you know very often the one that is made up of two letters is 
far wiser.” 

“ Then please remember that on this occasion you are on no account 
to be wise.” 

“I wonder whether you would be very broken-hearted if I said 
‘No’?” 

As Miss Paget spoke, she watched the young man’s face curiously. 


THE SILENT SEA 


9 


Before he could reply there was a knock at the door. It was one of the 
servants, who came to tell Miss Paget that her father wished to see her 
in the library. 

“ Yes, I promise — I will give you an answer to-morrow,” she said, as 
she bade Victor good-by. 

“And, Helen, you will promise, too, that no dreadful old woman will 
turn up ?” 

“ Oh, poor Mrs. Tillotson ! you must not be cross at her ; she is my 
habitual Providence when I want an unexacting companion.” 


CHAPTER H. 

Mr. Paget did not long detain his daughter in the library. But 
when she was disengaged, instead of hastening to join her old friend, 
Miss Paget went back into the dining-room, and stood looking out on . 
the lawn in front, with wide-open, unseeing eyes. Outwardly she was 
calm ; but, in reality, she felt more deeply moved than she had ever 
been in the whole previous course of her life. Often it had seemed to 
her that, in leaving the most impressionable years behind her, without 
ever having experienced any absorbing affection, a premature atrophy of 
the heart had fallen on her. But now ? 

Her girlhood had not been a happy one. She was Mr. Paget’s only 
daughter by a second wife. When he married the second time he was a 
professor in the Sydney University, with three daughters of a party- 
going age by his first wife. The three young ladies bitterly resented the 
intrusion of a step-mother. They were eager for amusements, for ele- 
gant dresses, and for all the forms of social distinction which cannot be 
enjoyed without money. And the new wife had very little of her own, 
beyond expectations from a wealthy grandfather. But he belonged to 
the hardy old stock of pioneers who live forever. The young step-mother 
did not, however, live long to be an encumbrance on the family resources. 
She died a few months after Helen’s birth, intrusting the bright-eyed 
little baby to the special charge of her eldest step-daughter. Perhaps 
none of the step-sisters were purposely unkind. Yet Helen’s first con- 
scious refiections regarding herself were that she was somehow one of the 
failures of life, and that she had entered it without any reasonable pre- 
text. And as she reached the dividing-line between girlhood and wom- 
anhood, existence for a time became harder. The family for the first 
time fell into money straits. Mr. Paget quarrelled with the Senate of 
the University of Sydney, and in a sudden access of wounded vanity he 


10 


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resigned liis post. For four years he maintained his family as best he 
could, by private tuition. 

The change from an assured position worth over a thousand a year to 
that of an unsuccessful coach, earning a few precarious hundreds per an- 
num, was a sufficiently bitter one. To make matters worse, the ex-pro- 
fessor’s elder daughters were still all unmarried. Without money and 
without prospects, without minds to cultivate or amiability to fall back 
on, with thwarted ambitions and with a well-developed taste for the good 
things of the world, this stagnant period of straitened means was marked 
by sordid discomfort, discontent, and bickerings. And this crisis em- 
braced Helen’s life from seventeen to twenty-one — the most keenly sus- 
ceptible and receptive years of a girl’s experience. To be shabbily 
dressed ; to go to parties and sit often without a partner, watching other 
girls dancing ; to see happiness only in the eyes of others, when Nat- 
ure’s blossoming time has come, and the physique is most exquisitely 
alive to enjoyment — this was Helen’s lot as a young girl. 

Then the fortunes of the family changed with a rush. Mr. Paget was 
successful in his application for a professorship in the Adelaide Univer- 
sity. A few months after settling there, the eldest Miss Paget raptur- 
ously accepted an offer of marriage from a wealthy man well advanced 
in years. His hair was white, and his pedigree unknown. He had ac- 
quired the art of writing late in life, but had never learned to spell. There 
were many who gladly testified that he had been coachman to one of the 
few people who kept a carriage thirty years before, that he had estab- 
lished a small second-hand shop in one of the streets before it was made. 
Be these matters as they might, one thing quite certain now was that he 
had seven thousand a year, and a handsome residence near town, adorned 
with pictures which never failed to excite in him a certain respect for 
art. He could not get over the fact that some of the smallest of them 
were the costliest. 

The other two sisters married in less than a year afterwards — one a 
broker, the other a lawyer ; both rather elderly, and both in prosperous 
circumstances. 

Two years and a half after these marriages, Helen’s great-grandfather 
died, at the ripe age of ninety-seven, and her share of his wealth was 
£3000 a year. Oh, if it had only come to her earlier ! This was the 
first and most vivid feeling which the news of her fortune awoke. How 
it would have redeemed her youth from those haunting, miserable mem- 
ories, which no later gifts of fortune could ever efface ! 

It is to be feared that neither a course of poverty nor a sudden access 
of riches is a phase of experience likely to raise an observant human be- 
ing’s opinion of mankind. Miss Paget had been subjected to both or- 
deals, and it cannot be denied that her nature had suffered from each ex- 


THE SILENT SEA 


11 


treme. Perhaps, if her training had been more delicate and loving, or if 
her disposition had been less egoistic, her estimate of the meanness and 
vanity and unscrupulous self-seeking that underlie society would have 
been less unsparing — her mistrust of her fellow-creatures less profound. 
And even as it was, her first impulses, after coming into her inheritance, 
were unselfishly generous. She resolved always to be kind and helpful 
to others — to abjure self-seeking, to be readily touched to action and 
sympathy by the tragic element in other lives. It needed but little per- 
suasion to make her father give up his professional work and devote 
himself to those leisurely pursuits which figured in his imagination as 
laborious study and research. Thus, at twenty-five years of age Miss 
Paget found herself with a great deal of money to spend, servants to 
rule, patronage of various kinds to bestow, and with a father, a pseudo- 
sensitive bookish man, to shield from too promiscuous contact with a 
society whose less unselected contingencies had, in his estimation, a vul- 
gar trick of being either wearisome or futile — often both. 

Miss Paget took up the role of mistress of a household maintained on 
an opulent scale of expenditure, with vague longings for remoteness 
from the commoner aims of life. Her position increased her sense of 
individual responsibility, but lessened her opportunities for cleaving to 
ideal values. How can one reconcile theories of self-sacrifice with the 
careful supervision of dinner-parties embracing a score of courses and 
costly delicacies out of season ? As mistress of a household of which 
her father was the head, her most intimate relations were chiefiy with 
elderly friends rather than young people of her own choosing. Of course, 
elderly people really govern the w^orld ; its surface belongs to them ; they 
make its laws and preach its sermons ; endow its charities and order its 
dinners. No doubt this is as it should be, seeing that calm days, the 
processes of digestion, and the question of a future life are naturally of 
more moment to them than to the young. It is the instinct of a man 
as he loses the ardor of youth to guard himself against enthusiasms and 
surprises, to become more acquiescent and prudent ; and yet somehow 
it may be questioned whether to live much with old people is a good 
moral tonic for the young. At any rate, in Miss Paget’s case the plan 
did not on the whole turn out a success. She became too wise for her 
years, too consciously superior. 

She had not been long at the head of a large establishment when she 
was preternaturally alive to all the small deceits and compromises, deep- 
ening into cant and duplicity, that enter so largely into the intercourse 
of average society. She was shocked when she saw women, who had 
not a good word for each other apart, rush on meeting into one an- 
other’s arms; indignant when she realized how largely in her circle 
hospitality was based on the give and receive principle. She became a 


12 


THE SILENT SEA 


little Timonesque, and recorded her impressions somewhat too inci- 
sively. 

Bnt she was early taken to task and admonished as to her duties and 
obligations. 

“ You knowq Helen, a girl at the head of a house like yours and papa’s 
has to be as careful as if she were a married woman,” her elder sister 
said to her solemnly, after some vivacious speech regarding the perfidy 
of mankind in general. 

“But she need not tell quite so many fibs — having the future of no 
baby-girls to think of — and surely she need not be as credulous as a mar- 
ried woman,” returned the younger sister, with a little temper. 

None of her brothers-in-law seemed to her very admirable apart from 
their faculty for making money. Indeed, most of the husbands she ob- 
served with her relentlessly keen eyes, at this period, were to her as fig- 
ures in a melodrama, devoid of the more delicate and interesting nuances 
of human beings. 

Nor did the unattached men of her acquaintance appear much more 
attractive. She was perhaps too much engrossed with, her owm individ- 
uality to be able to get at the best side of others. She was certainly too 
apt to give expression to her scornful estimate of people in general to 
become very popular. Yet she enjoyed balls and pretty dresses and ex- 
pensive forms of amusement. But the contrast between the homage she 
now received and the neglect that had been her portion when she was 
much younger and more eager for pleasure poisoned her enjoyment. 
Only she attributed her dissatisfaction to more impersonal grounds. In 
the midst of costly entertainments she liked to fancy herself haunted 
with a sense of anxiety for the greater happiness and morality of the 
race, to believe that it was the negation of living selfishly in luxurious 
ease, in a world crowded with lives paralyzed by poverty, which cast a 
shadow on her enjoyment. Gradually the more abstract motives really 
moved her. There were days in which her thoughts were permeated 
with a strong feeling of responsibility for the welfare of others ; espe- 
cially after reading some tale of every-day suffering in the newspapers, or 
a vehement Socialistic pamphlet, her whole mind would 4^0 possessed 
with the spoiled conditions of society. 

At such times, everything around her furnished examples of the reck- 
less waste of those who enjoyed without working ; of the cramped, col- 
orless lives of those who worked without enjoying. But how to take 
away power from despots, and gold from capitalists, and sorrow from 
the lives of women and children? Or, without aspiring to anything 
great or vague or general, how to rob even one social form of enjoyment 
of the mortifications of neglect, the stings of disappointment, and the 
barbs of social inequality ? 


THE SILENT SEA 


13 


When overtaken with these moods of rebellion against the existing 
order of things, it seemed to Miss Paget as if there was no form of rec- 
reation or pleasure known to her in society which had not some subtle 
elements of inequality that poisoned for many all the springs of enjoy- 
ment. 

At balls and dances she hated to see the way in which girls who had 
finer dresses or danced better than others, or who were prettier, or 
wealthier, or enjoyed more social consideration, took full advantage of 
their good fortune without considering the residuum, who looked on 
with mingled feelings of humiliation and anger and scorn. Ah, how 
well she knew the situation ! 

If men ask each other to dinner, they are careful to provide the very 
best fare. But girls ask one another to parties often only to be humili- 
ated,’’ she would sometimes say on the very scene of action. At other 
times she would point her moral afterwards. 

‘‘ Did you notice the Ryerston girls the other evening at their fashion- 
able cousin’s birthday ball? They sat in a row like plucked pullets 
nearly the whole evening, without dancing or conversation. They came 
in from the country, and were introduced to no one. ... I do believe 
girls are often meaner than men, if that is possible.” 

Such speeches as these — and Miss Paget made many of them during 
the first year or so that she most frequented Adelaide society — do not 
endear a girl to either sex ; they seldom make her popular with those 
she attacks, never with those whose side she takes. 

At first she had a certain pride in saying that she did not get on well 
with young people. She would often sit out half an evening without 
accepting any of the partners that came round her for dances. “There 
are always some wallflowers. I want to take my proper share of the 
system,” she would say ; and from that she gradually passed on to the 
neglect of dancing, and devoted a large share of her time and thoughts 
to works of charity and self-improvement. 

She threw herself into movements for social regeneration with the 
ardor of a neophyte who regards every effort for the moral improvement 
of society as assort of root that infallibly promotes the growth of wings. 
But gradually she found that the “mutable rank-scented many,” who 
are chosen with such pathetic belief as the most fitting subjects for the 
adventures of philanthropists, were for the most part impervious to ideas, 
and capable of being converted many times with little improvement in 
their social condition, and no change of morals. Gradually she was 
overtaken by something of that lassitude of mind, that indifference to 
wide questions, which often falls on women whose ambition and capacity 
of thought are in advance of their power of action. The pathos and 
struggles of other lives touched her less keenly. She lost her faculty of 


14 


THE SILENT SEA 


quick, generous anger against injustice and wr.ong-doing. It was all very 
funny and mixed up, she said ; but what was one to do? 

In the meantime she developed into the most charming of hostesses. 
In other matters she still retained the strain of an ambiguous nature. 
She was moved by the same influences to conflicting issues, according to 
the mood of the moment ; but in social matters she became impeccably 
consistent. She had unbounded toleration for all the little wiles and 
hypocrisies and acted falsehoods that used at first to fire her with scorn. 
From toleration she insensibly passed on to the same practices. Agree- 
able little falsehoods and polite impositions, simulated enthusiasms and 
make-believe friendships, entered into the daily current of her life, till at 
times she could hardly tell whether her sentiments were real or imag- 
inary. 

“ Ah, but this is real — this is my life !” she cried in a low voice pas- 
sionately, and the unbidden tears rose in her eyes. “ But will it come to 
anything ?” she asked herself with that mistrust of happiness which seems 
to come so readily to those who have known little joy in early life. 
“And, after all,’’ she said, “ what right have I to look for a happy end- 
ing ? Other people lie to me, and I lie to them ; but at any rate I can 
be honest to myself. I know Victor would never have proposed a word 
of love if I had not led him on with all the arts at my command. And 
yet I know that in time he may love me well — and who is there on the 
whole earth that would be a more devoted wife to him than I ? But, oh, 
the endless cackle of foolish women, who have nothing better to do than 
talking of their neighbors’ affairs !” 

Here Miss Paget recalled all Mrs. Tillofeson’s speeches ; and at the rec- 
ollection her heart hardened against her old friend, and she purposely 
delayed rejoining her for some minutes longer. When she at last re- 
turned to the drawing-room, Mrs. Tillotson wore a half-resentful, half- 
resigned air, something like a parrot in a cage, who does not like it, but 
has got used to it in the course of time. She was a lady of large means 
but uneasy investments. Since her widowhood her life had been one 
long panic as to the safety of good mines, modified by high dividends 
from risky ones. When she was alone there was generally a mine in the 
unknown regions of Australia round which her thoughts played with 
varying emotions. And failing this, there were her two sons-in-law — 
one of them unsound in finance, the other in his lungs. But on this oc- 
casion her usual subjects seemed to have failed her. 

“ It has just come into my head, Helen, that I interrupted you and 
Victor in some important business. You are both people of considerable 
means. You have learned to know each other well on the passage. You 
were, perhaps, buying or selling shares.” Mrs. Tillotson spoke with a 
long pause between each sentence. 


THE SILENT SEA 


15 


Miss Paget laughed, in spite of herself. 

“ My dear Mrs. Tillotson, I have not been talking to Mr. Fitz-Gibbon 
all this time. I have been in to my father, and — ” 

“Oh, is that it, dear?” said Mrs. Tillotson, her manner thawing at 
once. “ Well, I should like to have talked a little more with Victor. It 
is odd, the sort of manner boys get when they come to be nineteen or so. 
They seem just as smiling and friendly as ever, but, somehow, they don’t 
tell you things as they used to. Now, I did want to know exactly how 
much a year he’ll have when he comes of age. The Masons say he’ll 
have about two thousand pounds a year. The Sedleys said. No — about 
fifteen hundred pounds. Well, what a pity it seems that his uncle 
should have kept it from them all this time ! Poor dear Mrs. Fitz-Gib- 
bon ! she was one of those women that like elegance, flowers, and china 
and old lace, and silver things with old monograms. But what a fight 
she has had with the world 1 And her brothers never forgave her marry- 
ing that wild, handsome young Irishman — though, indeed, others thought 
he was rather a catch for Mary Drummond, being a captain of the Life 
Guards, and the governor’s nephew and aide-de-camp, and all.” 

Mrs. Tillotson fairly talked herself out of breath. But Helen, instead 
of allowing her thoughts to play round far different subjects, which was 
her usual plan when her old friend took up one of her wordy mono- 
graphs, drank in all she said with eager interest. She knew that Victor, 
after taking his B.Sc. degree at the Adelaide University, had gone abroad 
to study metallurgy at Freyberg, with a view to becoming an assayer, 
and acquiring a good knowledge of general mining. His uncle, he told 
her, had been an enthusiast about gold-mining, which he regarded as the 
most important industry of Australia. It was the old gentleman’s wish 
he should make a special study of this subject, but not until the week he 
started back to Australia, on receiving his uncle’s hasty summons, having 
been away only five months in all, did Victor know he meant to make 
him his heir. Miss Paget feared that he had, perhaps, a large fortune 
left to him. It was with a thrill of pleasure she learned that his income 
was a good deal less than her own. “ At least, people cannot say that 
it was his fortune that allured me,” she thought. And then she began, 
for the hundredth time within the hour, to plan what her answer should 
be on the morrow. “ A mail-boat engagement !” How well she knew 
the shrugs and sneers and endless grimaces — each one an insinuation — 
with which the words would be spoken ; carried from house to house — 
from one coterie to the other ! No, she would not allow the engagement 
to be made known for some time to come. 

“ There is such a discrepancy in our years. . . . Let there be a time 
of probation,” she would say to him ; “ say, four or six months — a pro- 
bation of which no one but our two selves will know anything.” 


16 


THE SILENT SEA 


“My dear, I have been forgetting what made me come so early, so 
that I would be sure of seeing you,” cried Mrs. Tillotson. “Do you re- 
member anything of the Mrs. Lindsay who stayed at the Seatons’ place 
three years ago ?” 

“ I remember seeing her with a lovely young girl — her daughter, I 
think,” answered Miss Paget, slowly. 

“You don’t remember the name of her station, or her postal address?” 

“ No, I haven’t the least idea. There is nothing wrong, I hope ?” 

“ No, but you know the Seatons went away in a great hurry, and I 
promised Mrs. Seaton faithfully to write to Mrs. Lindsay and explain to 
her — and now I’ve lost the address. Of course Mrs. Seaton will write as 
soon as she gets to England ; but that will take so long.” 

“ Does Mrs. Lindsay always live in the Bush ?” asked Miss Paget, more 
for the sake of making conversation than because of any strong interest 
in the subject. 

“Yes, my dear, and she must have plenty of money, too. But her 
husband had the oddest notions. He quite turned the cold shoulder to 
my poor Willy, because he helped to float a mine that had no gold. As 
if Willy had anything to do with it beyond putting it on the market, 
and leaving it to Providence and the other brokers ! Perhaps he wished 
his widow to bury herself in the Bush ; but her daughter must be grow- 
ing up now. Why, she is sixteen past !” 

“ Sixteen past !” echoed Miss Paget with a curiously wistful intonation 
in her voice. She had not hitherto found girls of that age very interest- 
ing. She thought them for the most part vain, self-centred, and exact- 
ing. But just now she felt that she would give all she possessed for the 
power of putting baek the dial-hand of time. . . . Oh, to be quite in the 
morning of life, a*nd to walk in that enchanted garden of love’s young 
dream, which comes then or not at all ! For with the clasp of her lover’s 
hand warm on hers, and with the strong tumult of emotion which had 
suddenly made her pulses throb, had come the knowledge that love had 
come to her too late for that unreasoning, credulous, absorbed happiness 
which ii brings to the young. Rather it brought to her anxieties, and 
doubts, and a horde of restless questions that she could neither answer 
nor gainsay. She had entered on a game in which the first stake she 
played was serenity of mind — nay, of conscience itself. Could any game 
be worth playing at such a cost ? Alas ! she had no longer any power to 
abide by the cold dictates of reason. She realized with a sudden sense 
of suffocation that she had been caught in one of those currents which 
sweep lives on to full consummation or to disaster. . . . And yet — and 
yet — to disentangle herself from these hopes and fears, these swift, im- 
portunate emotions of a hitherto unknown passion. ... At the thought 
a strange famine of the soul seized her, in which for the first time she 


THE SILENT SEA 


17 


recognized the pallid negation of her previous life. Its monotonous 
round of small formal duties, the dull interchange of visits with dull 
women, the surfeit of tiresome details without aim or compensation — all 
lay before her in the cold light of remorseless disenchantment. . . . 
Better the tumult of emotion, better suffering, better even irretrievable 
disaster, than to reach the limit of life without having really lived through 
all the years. . . . And, after all, why should she give way to fear? Was 
it not possible that Victor’s affection would strengthen rather than wane 
as the days went on ? From this out she must strive to cast fear from 
her. . . . Above all — above all — she must never let Victor guess, the 
tempestuous unrest into which the bare thought of his defection threw 
her. . . . 

‘‘Now that I think of it, I do believe the Max-Gores would know 
Mrs. Lindsay’s address. I think, my dear, I’ll walk across there and 
see. . . .” 

If Mrs. Tillotson had said anything else before she rose to go, it 
was to unheeding ears. How curious, when one comes to think of it, 
is this double drama which goes on wherever two human beings are 
together ! The one so carefully selected — usually commonplace, spoken 
and acted with robust obviousness. The other silent, inward, searching 
into the depths of life, seldom communicated even in part, never wholly 
revealed to any living soul. 


CHAPTER HI. 

Though it was still early in August, many of the rose-bushes round 
the house known as Lindaraxa were covered with blooms. The tremu- 
lous shadow of white-stemmed young birches over the roses and countless 
marguerite bushes made a fascinating picture. 

“ But the house looks rather old,” said Miss Paget as the two sur- 
veyed it from the front. 

“Yes, but the garden, Helen, and the name,” replied Victor. “Lin- 
daraxa — doesn’t it call up pictures of dark-eyed donnas stepping out on 
balconies in the moonlight?” 

“ But your mother would not live in the garden ?” 

“ She would in the spring and summer, all the autumn, and most part 
of the winter,” said the young man recklessly. 

He was in very high spirits, and broke out every now and then into 
snatches of song. 

“ And just here,” he said, pausing at the end of the house where there 
2 


18 


THE SILENT SEA 


was a large window half buried in foliage, starred with the white convol- 
vulus, what a perfect nook of loveliness !” 

He paused abruptly, looking round with an air of startled wonder. 

‘‘What have you discovered?” said Miss Paget, half amused at the 
sudden change in his face. 

“ Why, Helen, I have seen this spot in my dreams over and over 
again. Not the window itself, but what you can see from it.” 

He was now standing with his back to the window, looking at the 
little orange grove opposite to it, and all the shrubs around, with minute 
scrutiny. 

“ What did you dream about it, Victor ?” asked Miss Paget with 
growing interest. 

They had met at the gate but a few minutes before, and the momen- 
tous question of their engagement had not yet been approached. It 
suddenly occurred to Miss Paget that if Victor had seen in visions of 
the night the spot in which perhaps her reply would be given, it might 
be a sign that this, after all, was the turning-point in his life. That 
it would be the central epoch of her own she could not for a moment 
doubt. 

“ Well, you know, it was one of those foolish, aimless dreams that 
stick to the mind, and yet seem to have no meaning,” answered Victor. 
“ I just used to see these trees in a sort of semicircle, with a lot of blos- 
soms on them ; there isn’t much now, you see.” 

“No, they’re not fruit-bearing; they are a late kind just coming into 
bud. Well, and then?” 

“ Well, I just used to see them and a heap of shrubs in flower, some 
lying across the path ; and that and the room I stood in was all the 
dream. By the way, I wonder if the room is like — ” 

He turned to look, but the blind was drawn down. 

“Tell me what the room was like, and then we’ll compare your 
dream with the reality when we go into the house,” said Miss Paget 
eagerly. 

“ It was a long, narrowish room and rather low, with a wide fireplace 
and deep recesses on each side of it. There was another window beside 
the one I looked out of, and that’s about all I remember. You see, I 
didn’t go into upholstery in my dream, perhaps because I never notice 
it when awake.” 

“ Let us go in and look at it now,” said Miss Paget, adding men- 
tally, “If the room is like the one in his dream, I shall take it as a good 
omen.” 

They rang at the front door, and in a few minutes the caretaker, a 
small, hump-backed woman with large, pathetic eyes, let them in. She 
seemed a little surprised as she looked from one to the other. 


THE SILENT SEA 


19 


‘‘Have you come for Mrs. North, ma’am?” she said hesitatingly to 
Miss Paget, the three standing in the hall. 

“ For Mrs. North ? No,” answered Miss Paget wonderingly. 

“ There is a notice that the place is to be let or sold. We want to 
have a look at the house, if you please,” said Victor. 

“ Oh, hasn’t the board been taken down ? It’s let, sir, on a two years’ 
lease to Mrs. North and her daughter, the lady doctor. I thought as 
perhaps you was Miss North, ma’am,” she said to Miss Paget. 

“ No ; but she is a friend of mine. When did she return from 
India ?” 

“ Two months ago, ma’am. The climate tried her terrible, but she’s 
getting on nicely now, I hear. I’ve only seen the mother ; Miss North 
has been to the place twice, but I was away, and it was John that showed 
her over the house.” 

“ Excuse us for having troubled you,” said Victor, slipping half a 
crown into the caretaker’s hand. 

Now that Lindaraxa was out of the market, he felt surer than ever 
that it was the place which, of all others, would have best pleased his 
mother. 

“ Would you mind letting us look at the sitting-room with the large 
window on the western side ?” he said, as the caretaker courtesied her 
thanks. 

She instantly showed them in ; and when they entered, the room cor- 
responded in each particular with the details of Victor’s dream. The 
shape of the chamber, the fireplace with the wide recesses on each side, 
the second window, which opened into a small conservatory — all were 
there. Miss Paget was agreeably excited ; but Victor thought his dream 
more foolish than ever. 

“ If I had been able to buy the place for my mother, there would 
have been some sense in it ; but just to dream of orange blossom, which 
I cannot stand, and a room in a house taken by people I don’t even 
know !” he said, drawing up the blind and looking out discontent- 
edly. 

“ You think if you see a room in a dream something should happen 
in it?” said Miss Paget, smiling. “Well, who knows? perhaps you’ll 
be one of Miss North’s patients.” 

“And have an arm taken oH when the orange-trees are in blossom. 
That would be charming !” said Victor with a smile. Then he thrust his 
hand into his breast-pocket. 

“ Helen, I have brought you a little souvenir of the East. Do you 
remember the gem-store where we bought the moonstones in Colombo ? 
Here are some of them in a bracelet — not so nicely set as I should like, 
but I didn’t give the jeweller much time,” 


20 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ Oh, how lovely !” cried Miss Paget, her eyes sparkling with pleas- 
ure as she looked at the large, lustrously gleanaing stones, whose soft, 
dreamy light was enhanced by the keen, incisive sparkle of Brazilian 
diamonds. She clasped the bracelet on her wrist, and then, with a 
sudden impetuous motion, bent her head and kissed the stones. 

“ Helen, tell me,” said Victor, drawing closer to her, “ is it because 
you are so fond of these moonstones that you kiss them? 

“ Yes; and because — ” 

‘‘Well, because — ?” 

“ You gave them to me.” A quick wave of color rose in her smooth, 
soft, olive-tinted cheeks as she spoke. 

“ Ah, now you are going to give me an answer, Helen.” 

“ Would you, perhaps, like to see the rest of the house, ma’am ?” 
said the caretaker, appearing at the half-open door. The two started 
guiltily apart. They declined the offer, saying that this room was all 
they wished to see. 

“ Come home with me, and I’ll tell you there,” said Miss Paget in a 
low voice as they went out at the gate. On the way to Lancaster House, 
which stood in the midst of its own grounds on a rise beyond the Tor- 
rens, about a mile to the northwest of the city, Victor spoke of the prob- 
ability of his joining a prospecting party that was spoken of as likely 
to start for the Macdonnel ranges in a few weeks. 

“ It would bridge over the time till I come of age,” he said. “ If I re- 
main in town I shall, of course, be in the warehouse ; and if there’s one 
thing in the world I hate, it’s being stuck on a stool all day like a sick 
ape.” 

“ Then I suppose, when you are your own master, you won’t remain 
in partnership with your Uncle Stuart ?” 

“ No ; I think not. For one thing, I don’t believe we should ever 
agree.” 

“ I dare say Mr. Drummond is rather wroth that you are your Uncle 
Shaw’s sole heir.” 

“ Oh, I think not ; in fact, I don’t suppose he even thought of it in 
that way,” returned Victor. 

: Miss Paget half smiled, and repeated the words to herself, “ Oh, youth, 
youth ! more beautiful than truth.” His boyish, whole-hearted belief in 
almost every human being with whom he came in contact was one of 
the most marked features of Victor’s temperament, “ That sort of con- 
fidence in mankind departs with one’s early years, and never, never 
comes back again,” was a thought that had often occurred to her during 
their intercourse on board the Mogul, The same thought came to her 
now, for she knew Mr. Stuart Drummond to be a hard, avaricious man 
with two spendthrift sons and several grown-up daughters. 


THE SILENT SEA 


21 


“ You see, Helen,” continued Victor, “ it’s partly a question of race, 
I expect. An Irishman, in Uncle Stuart’s eyes, is always a disagreeable 
blunder.” 

“ But you are partly Scotch.” 

“ Ah, but you don’t know how Irish I become when I’m with Uncle 
Stuart,” said Victor, in a half-penitent tone which made Helen laugh. 

“ It’s the truth I’m speaking,” said Victor seriously. “ Only last 
night, I know, I drove him half wild with rage.” 

‘‘ How was that?” 

“ Well, it began about my advancing two hundred pounds to 
O’Connor.” 

“ The violinist ?” 

‘‘Yes — and my old music-master, who plays Irish melodies in a way 
that would make a millstone sob.” 

“ But was it wise to advance him so much ?” 

“ As a business investment, perhaps it was a trifle weak,” replied 
Victor, with a twinkle in his eyes. “ But you know the sort of chap 
poor dear old O’Connor is about money. As long as he has any, the 
very crows are welcome to it. This time he had put his name to a bill for 
over a hundred and fifty pounds, not dreaming anything would go wrong. 
So, for the luxury of signing his name to a dishonest bit of paper, he 
was going to be sold up, Cremona violin and all, with his wife ill in bed, 
and seven youngsters wailing on his bosom.” 

“ Poor old man !” 

“ Yes, what could a fellow do but come between him and his signa- 
ture ? But you should have heard Uncle Stuart. By Jove ! the old 
man can slang when he gives his mind to it. Any one would think that 
to give money away was the blackest crime on earth. Whereas, when 
you come to think of it, what is the good of money until it is spent, 
somehow or other ?” 

“ Perhaps you asked your uncle that question?” 

“ No. I didn’t cheek him in the least when he was talking of the 
O’Connor affair. I was as meek as the Prodigal Son. I listened till he 
was quite at an end about hereditary extravagance — that was me ; and 
an idle, good-for-nothing fiddler— that was O’Connor, etc., etc. And 
then I said, ‘ Look here, sir ! it would be downright ingratitude on my 
part not to help a fellow-creature in distress. Here am I, without doing 
an ounce of work for it, coming into a lump sum of ten thousand 
pounds, and over fifteen hundred pounds a year, as soon as the clock 
strikes nine on the morning of the 31st of next December.’ ” 

“ That would annoy him !” said Miss Paget involuntarily. 

“ How do you know it would ?” asked Victor, with some astonish- 
ment. 


22 


THE SILENT SEA 


Well, you know, an old man doesn’t always like to see a young 
one step into so much unearned wealth at one bound,” answered Miss 
Paget, almost vexed to find herself returning to that theme again. 

Victor was silent for a little. 

I wonder if that can be the reason,” he said thoughtfully. “ I 
thought it was uncle’s liver. I know he has suffered from it badly 
sometimes. He got into an unaccountable scot when I said that. He 
said the 31st of December had not come yet, which was too obvious to 
call for remark, and that there’s many a slip between the cup and the 
lip, which is often true. But when he went on to say that I had better 
not make a pauper of myself before I knew whereabouts I was, I couldn’t 
figure out his meaning anyhow.” 

They were by this time walking up through the wide plane - tree 
avenue that led to the border of the lawn which fronted Miss Paget’s 
home. 

“Was all your Uncle Shaw’s money in the partnership?” asked Miss 
Paget. 

“Nearly all of it — except some in mines. I think he owns the 
twentieth part of the Colmar Mine, which is paying grand dividends 
at present. But, of course, Uncle Stuart has always been the manag- 
ing partner of the warehouse, and much the wealthier of the two.” 

“ It may be — ” 

“ Well — why do you stop, Helen ?” 

“ Perhaps I shouldn’t say it.” 

“ You should say anything you have a mind to.” 

“ There may be a crash coming — ” 

“And me left a penniless spalpeen, after all !” 

“ You would not be penniless as long — ” 

Miss Paget checked herself. 

“ Look here. Miss Paget,” said Victor, turning to her with laughing 
eyes, “I’ll have to take you to sea again. You never mutilated your 
sentences in this way when we paced the deck of the good ship Mogul, 
You’ve lost all confidence in me — ” 

“ No. I have not . . . but — well, you wouldn’t be penniless as long 
as I had any money.” 

“ Helen, that is your answer !” 

They paused in the shelter of the trees, and he possessed himself of 
her right hand. 

“ But if I thought there was any danger of my becoming penniless, 
you know, Helen — ” 

“We won’t consider that just now, Victor. . . . And after thinking it 
over, I am sure it is better there should be no hard and fast engagement 
for a time*” 


THE SILENT SEA 


23 


Not till I am twenty-one ; that is nearly five months. Surely that 
is long enough for anything.” 

He held her hands in his, looking into her face with frank, affection- 
ate eyes. It was with a strong effort that Miss Paget kept her emotion 
under control as she replied, 

“ Until after December no one must know anything of this. . . . Af- 
ter that, Victor, there may be nothing to know. Only if so, our own two 
selves will always remember that one of us was young enough, and the 
other was foolish enough, to dream an impossible dream.” 

Though she struggled hard for composure, her voice vibrated with 
intense emotion, and tears forced themselves into her eyes. Victor was 
suddenly and deeply moved. It is true that he was entering on this 
weighty compact with a heart too little under the infiuence of the deeper 
feelings of which his nature was capable. His youth and inexperience 
and impulsive friendliness had led him too far. But his generosity and 
good feeling stood him at this crisis in the stead of a more profound 
affection. He could not realize all that affected Miss Paget, but when he 
saw her so deeply moved he became conscious of an uneasy apprehension 
lest he should fail her in some way. A heavier sense of responsibility 
fell on him. For a little time they were both silent, and then Victor 
found relief from a vague mistrust and discontent with himself by mak- 
ing a resolution which he knew would entail some sacrifice. 

“ Dear Helen, I am not half good enough for you,” he said ; “ you are 
ever so much wiser than I am. Now, don’t begin to speak of the dis- 
parity in our years. It isn’t that so much as that you were born wiser.” 

“But I’ve suddenly come to the end of my wisdom; it’s a case. of 
arrested development,” said Miss Paget, smiling. “ While you are going 
to get sager every day — wasn’t that what you said yesterday ?” 

“ I’m afraid you have a dreadfully retentive memory,” he said gayly ; 
and then, suddenly relapsing into seriousness, “But I’ll tell you what, 
Helen — I won’t go away prospecting ; I’ll go into the warehouse for the 
next five or six months, and try to understand the business, and be a 
door-mat to uncle rather than have rows with him. I think that will be 
more appropriate for an engaged man.” 

“ Yes ; the liveliest door-mat on record, I should think,” said Miss 
Paget, laughing. The announcement made her very happy. 

They were strolling across the lawn, when one or two little decorous 
shouts and calls behind attracted their attention. It was Mrs. Tillotson, 
hurrying up the avenue as fast as she could. She was of such an in- 
tensely social disposition that she could not bear the sight of two talking 
in full view of her, without straining every effort to join in the conversa- 
tion. People who have this vivid partiality for their fellow-creatures sel- 
dom pause to inquire whether the feeling is reciprocal. 


24 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ ril say good-by now, Helen,” said Victor, before the, new-comer could 
reach them. This will be a good time to find uncle in his oflSice to talk 
over my new plan with him. ... I don’t think I could stand another 
dose of your ‘habitual providence’ just now; but may I come soon 
again ?” 

As he lit a cigar and walked into the city, one of the impressions 
which Victor drew from the history of that morning was that, after all, 
dreams were an awful fraud. Why had the special view from that special 
window at Lindaraxa come to him again and again in his dreams, and 
why, before he had ever seen it, was the form of that special room im- 
printed on his memory ? 

“ When the mater talks solemnly about ‘ presageful ’ dreams after this,” 
he thought with a smile, “ I’ll bombard her with this sham one of mine.” 

And yet, though life, like an unskilful drama, is crowded with details 
that explain nothing, and full of seemingly significant beginnings that 
lead nowhere, this foolish dream came to have strangely significant asso- 
ciations. 

“ Oh, my dear,” panted Mrs. Tillotson, after she had warmly embraced 
Helen, “ it is so good of you to take such an interest in Mrs. Fitz-Gib- 
bon’s boy 1 But he is nice — now, isn’t he ? Something so boyish and 
genuine about him ! I am afraid the girls will run after him dreadfully 
— though it would be like infant-stealing, till he is a few years older. I 
expect some of them did their best to set their caps at him on the Mo- 
gul ? But you would be a sort of protection for him. He seems to have 
quite taken to you. But, my dear, I hope he doesn’t bore you by giving 
you a little too much of his company.” 

There was something so cold and strained in Miss Paget’s tones, as she 
replied, that even Mrs. Tillotson noticed the difference. She paused on 
the lawn, saying, 

“ Perhaps I had better not come in. I just ran up, in passing, to tell 
you that I have found Mrs. Lindsay’s address. I was afraid you might 
be giving yourself anxiety in making inquiries. You always take so 
much trouble for your friends.” 

Miss Paget, who had not given the matter a thought, felt a little con- 
science-smitten, and insisted on Mrs. Tillotson’s staying for lunch, and 
she responded by saying, 

“Well, my dear, though I had to put everything on a more econom- 
ical footing since the last fall in silver. I’ll never stint my friendships. 
Thank goodness ! I need not give up my friends, though I put down my 
carriage; and I know you always enjoy having me — we have such de- 
lightful chats I” 


THE SILENT SEA 


25 


CHAPTER ly. 

The lady whose address both when lost and when found had led Mrs. 
Tillotson to make an early call at Lancaster House was at eleven o’clock 
on this sunny August morning deep in the perusal of a letter which had 
that day reached her from an old friend and relative who, like herself, 
was a widow, and was then living with two young daughters in Men- 
tone. 

“ I am well, dear friend, only that oftener than before I am overtaken 
by hours of cold, insurmountable languor and indolence, in which I can 
do nothing but remember. Memory, like an implacable little inquisitor, 
forces me to go down to those soundless deeps of life in which happi- 
ness is lost and the soul jeopardized, and the faith with which we con- 
soled ourselves is resolved into beautiful cradle-songs that have lost the 
power of lulling us to sleep. Do you know those days in which the rain 
beats perpetually on the roof, and the wind rises in hollow moans, and 
we are crushed between two infinities — the days that are dead and those 
that are to come ? 

“But no — you are one of those who, in the face of the bitterest as- 
saults of fate, find a sure standing-ground, a peace which the world can 
neither give nor take away. . . . All this morning I was rummaging 
among old papers and letters. Yours I read in their order one year after 
the other, and suddenly the story of your life lay before me as if for the 
first time. We are so blind, mostly going through life half asleep, wak- 
ing up now and then when there is a noise or a great flash of light, and 
the reality of things comes home to us only like half-remembered dreams. 
As I thought of your history, dear Margaret, left almost alone in the 
world, with the terrible memories of the Indian Mutiny shadowing your 
youth like a nightmare — of the long years of nervous prostration that 
followed, those in which our friendship began and the great happiness 
of your life came to you — and then pondered over your sudden cruel 
bereavement, my heart was very wae. I came on the first letter you 
wrote after Doris was born.” 

Here Mrs. Lindsay put down the letter and looked fondly at her 
daughter, a lovely girl past sixteen, who sat near her, engrossed in copy- 
ing the border of an illuminated missal. After a few moments the 
mother resumed her reading : 


26 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ Ah, what a tender rapture breathes through this little letter ! Baby 
was four weeks old ; already she began to notice. ‘ When we put a fin- 
ger within hers she closes them over it quite fast. . . . Oh, what tiny 
morsels of rose-leaf fingers ! Richard looks at them for twenty minutes 
at a time. “ Think of that third little left finger with a wedding-ring on 
it one day !” I say to him gravely, and he looks at me reproachfully, as if 
I were already intriguing for a son-in-law. It is all so exquisitely absurd 
that we laugh till the tears come.’ ” 

“ Mother, dearie !” 

Mrs. Lindsay gave a little start. It was now her turn to be looked at. 
Her daughter’s eyes were fixed on her with puzzled inquiry. 

I have been watching you, and you are almost laughing and crying 
at the same time. I wish you would laugh only. Is it something sad or 
merry in that letter, mammy ?” 

“ Perhaps a little of both, dear ; not merry exactly, but something that 
was so long ago.” 

“And why isn’t it now, mother?” 

“ Oh, my dear — ” The delicate, sensitive lips quivered and the voice fell. 

The girl came and knelt by her mother’s side and stroked her cheeks. 

“Mother, I would like to know the sort of things that make you 
merry one time and sad another.” 

“ When you are older you will understand, Dorrie.” 

“ Oh, is everything to happen when I am older ?” said the girl, with a 
slight accent of weariness. 

“ No, my child,” said the mother, with a little smile ; “ you are my 
own good Doris without waiting for more years.” 

“ You cunning little mother ! Do you know, that is a way of petting 
and scolding me at the same time I Is it because you are as wise as Nan 
Ko that you do two things at once so often ?” 

“ Nan Ko ? My dear, has Shung-Loo been telling you about a fresh 
Mongolian hero?” 

“ Yes, mamma — one who wrote the story of the ‘ Purple Hair-Pin ’ in 
forty volumes !” 

“ Oh, Doris !” 

“Yes, truly ; he used to take it about with him on two white elephants, 
and when the black barbarians saw him coming they used to fly.” 

“ For fear of having it read to them ?” 

“ Not at all, you almost naughty little mother ! It was because, after 
hearing it read, they had to be good or die, and mostly they had to die. 
He killed the Red Kalono — a terrible dragon. Where his shadow came 
the birds stopped singing, and no more garlands could be made. I think 
it was Nan Ko who taught the people that a grain of sand has a voice as 
well as a poet.” 


THE SILENT SEA 27 

“ Doris, do you know, I knew a girl once — ” began the mother with 
smiling seriousness. 

Mamma, is that quite fair ?” asked the girl, holding up a rosy fore- 
finger in an admonitory way. “ I have told you quite a new story out 
of a wise book stopped with red.” 

“ And I am going to tell you an old one about a girl who could re- 
member Chinese fables out of forty volumes, but couldn’t learn the 
French verbs out of one.” 

“ I believe I know that girl by* heart. Don’t let us talk of her any 
more, mamma.” 

They smiled fondly in each other’s faces, and then the girl went back 
to her painting of the wide, intricate border full of curling tendrils, of 
stiff, even leaves, of birds with strange beaks and plumages, and in the 
midst angels now and then, with long lazuline blue robes, with wide gold 
halos round their heads, and folded, pointed wings snow-white, all look- 
ing upward and making sweet melody, some on long reed trumpets, 
others on viols, on citherns, on fantastically curled and many-tubed instru- 
ments whose names are unknown to the laity. 

The mother resumed her reading. 

“ And now Doris has passed her sixteenth birthday. Don’t you think, 
dear Margaret, the time has come when she should see a little more of 
the human species in her own rank of life? Do not wait till she is 
seventeen to leave the charmed solitude of Ouranie. Not that it is real- 
ly a solitude; what with your station people, your little township six 
miles off, and the settlement of splitters in the Peppermint Ranges, and 
that wonderful major-domo of yours, Shung-Loo, who is so learned in the 
old lore of his country and the art of making delicate cakes. Your 
Doris, with her direct, transparent nature, her charm of quick imagina- 
tion, her love of woods and birds and fiowers, her inheritance of your 
gift of music and love of art, seems to have found in your surroundings 
all the nourishment needed hitherto for the harmonious development of 
early years. . But now, has not the time come when you should leave 
Ouranie? Is it not because of Richard’s austere denunciations of the 
habitual frivolity of our sex that you have lingered there so long ? 

“I have been looking over some of his old letters to me. Dear, 
noble-hearted Richard! I am glad that though so many of the imper- 
fections of our kind and sex always hung about me, the bond of kinship 
between us was never ruptured. I think the fact that he first came to 
know you through me strengthened the bond of relationship into real 
friendship. But though I revere your dear husband’s memory, Mar- 
garet, to-day it has been borne in on me that your idolatry of him has 
led you to remain over-long in the seclusion of the Bush. 

“ ‘ After all,’ he writes in one of his letters now before me, ‘ it is no 


28 


THE SILENT SEA 


wonder that women exercise so little influence for good in the world. 
From childhood they live largely in an atmosphere of small intrigues and 
deceptions and concealed jealousies ; first in school, then in society. In 
school they are subjected to the persistent push of teachers, ambitious 
for academic degrees, and examination passes. Their most precious gifts 
of spontaneous intuition and direct observation are hopelessly impaired 
or destroyed, in the worry and drive of acquiring multifarious scraps of 
knowledge, which give them neither more balanced capacities nor a wider 
outlook on life. They are the victims of ideas they cannot digest, of 
ideals that add nothing to the well-being of the world. . . . When they 
enter the immense fraud we call society, they are plunged into a frankly 
cynical scramble as to who shall get the best nuts.’ 

“ Well, well, granted that the old seductive, invincibly pagan world in 
which we live is largely swayed by passions that we do not name in our 
children’s hearing, still it is the only one in which our poor bodies are at 
home, the one in which we find our happiness or not at all ; the world 
in which your Doris must take her place as a woman among other 
women. She has been sheltered and reared as within convent walls; 
and up to a certain age this may be right for girls ; but she is now over 
sixteen. . . . You have told me that if you were taken from her it is 
to my care, conjointly with her guardian in London, she would be in- 
trusted. You do not say much of your health, but through your later 
letters there seems to me an increasing detachment from all the things 
of earth. And do I not know how frail and shaken you were for so 
many years ? Would it not be wiser to lose no time in bringing Doris 
to what would be her new home, while you are with her to make it fa- 
miliar and home-like? . . . Pardon me, Margaret, if I seem to plead 
over-much ; but to-day, after a separation of seventeen years, reading 
your letters, so many scores of them, while the wind blows in shrill 
gusts, and the rain is dashing furiously against the windows, I seem to 
have renewed our intimacy, to see more clearly into the tenor of your 
ideas, to perceive that you shrink more and more from the thought of 
increased communion with your kind. Is it that in these later years you 
have become more and more of a mystic ?” 

Mrs. Lindsay, on reading this question, half folded the closely written 
pages and looked out through the open French window into the garden, 
which on this side of the house came to within a few paces of the ver- 
anda. Beyond the garden, forming its eastern boundary, lay a large lake 
fringed with gum-trees and ti-trees. The surface of the water, faintly 
rippled and sparkling in the sunlight, was one of the sights which famil- 
iarity never rendered less beautiful. This lake was called Gauwari, a 
native name that signifies great depth — a title justified by the fact that 
the lake had never within living memory been greatly diminished. Mrs. 


THE SILENT SEA 


29 


Lindsay’s eyes rested for a long time on Gauwari ; then she looked round 
the room that they were in, trying to imagine the day on which she 
should leave Ouranie, the home that she had come to as a bride nearly 
seventeen years ago. She was conscious of an immobility of disposition 
which made her shrink from the thought of change and movement as 
from experiences she lacked strength and will-power to assimilate. And 
there was yet another link that bound her to Ouranie. She felt that the 
bond which had been the strongest, deepest influence of her life was here 
still unbroken, that in the spot which was consecrated to her by so many 
sacred memories, her husband’s companionship had not ended with death. 

This was a development of feeling that owed nothing to extraneous 
excitement or to any of the grotesque manifestations usually associated 
with experiences that seem in any way to make a gap in the barrier that 
guards the unseen from the material world. Orthodox forms of belief 
had never appealed to her keenly. Perhaps the shipwreck of all her 
closest ties in the horrors of the Indian Mutiny disposed her little to find 
consolation in professions that dwell over-much on the benefits and com- 
forts of the Christian faith, while the renunciation that lies at its core is 
in practice profoundly denied. It was her misfortune to know Chris- 
tians solely of the type of those who turn the cross they profess to carry 
into a sectarian triangle, with which to anathematize the rest of the 
world, and to secure pews for themselves in this world and that which is 
to come. Her husband’s influence had all been on the side of severance 
from creeds and formulas. 

When she was left alone the crisis of her spiritual life came. The 
conviction that death ends all, that all we are or have the faculty of be- 
coming is annihilated with the last pulsation of the heart, fastened on 
her like a virulent disease. There are those who can accept the belief 
calmly, but to Mrs. Lindsay it brought that sense of absolute ruin which 
we name despair. Then one radiant morning in mid-winter, when the 
air was full of the breath of violets and jessamine, and the delicate saf- 
fron of the dawn still lingered in the east, she Icnew that her despair was 
a dark, wild atheism, and that the fuller life into which her husband had 
passed had quickened her own inner nature as with a breath of healing 
inspiration. 

We are so brow-beaten by the thrones and dominations of the mate- 
rial world that, when we hear of people to whom a message of salvation 
has come apart from creeds and rituals consecrated by the roll of many 
centuries, our habitual attitude is one of mistrust, if not hostility. And 
yet there may be powers which touch human intuitions to the quick, in 
a mode hidden from the world as completely as the messages that came 
to Isaiah were hidden from his idolatrous fellow-countrymen. 

Be this as it may, Mrs. Lindsay’s experience not only rescued her from 


30 


THE SILENT SEA 


despair and the gradual decline of all her functions, gave her not only 
courage to live for her child, but to cherish her life as a personal gift and 
become serenely happy. Nothing henceforth shook her faith that our 
present existence, with all its confusion and cruel enigmas, was but a 
passing phase of experience, and that, if we do not love the world over- 
much, we may often pass beyond its power, and habitually live above its 
influence. For some time of late she had been conscious of declining 
strength. This was brought home to her very forcibly now by the trem- 
ulous agitation that seized her at the thought of leaving Ouranie. She 
had always looked forward to doing so when Doris grew uj), and she felt 
the full force of the argument used by her friend Mme. de Serziac ; but 
it was the later portion of the letter that finally decided her. This was 
dated a few days after the earlier portion, and ran : 

‘‘Raoul has given us a pleasant surprise. He has obtained a fort- 
night’s leave of absence from his regiment two months earlier than we 
expected. Yesterday he was prowling round my room, turning over my 
books and photographs. Presently he came on the last photograph you 
sent me of yourself and Doris. It was the first time he saw it, and — 
well, he fell in love with her. . . . Over and over again he comes to 
gaze at the beautiful young face, and says, ‘Did you ever see such 
wonderful eyes ! and what an exquisite mouth ! . . . And I believe I 
owe her a letter. I don’t believe I answered the last note she sent me 
on my birthday.’ And then he asks me impatiently when you and 
Doris are coming on that visit which we have talked about indefinitely 
for so many years. Well, dear Margaret, I have no after-thought in tell- 
ing you this, only if our children on meeting . . . Oh, you will be able 
to follow the trend of my thoughts. And you will not be surprised if, 
in the course of a week or two, Doris gets a cousinly*little letter from 
Raoul, congratulating her on her sixteenth birthday. I send you his 
photo, taken a few days before he left Paris, also some of the girls.” 

Mrs. Lindsay opened a small packet that had come with the letter. 
She looked a long time at the young man’s photograph. He was not 
yet twenty-three, but already there was something in his face of that pre- 
cocious discontent which one sees in the eyes of those who early plunge 
into the glittering, vibrant life of great cities. As Mrs. Lindsay examined 
the picture with a jealous scrutiny, the recollection came to her of the 
overture in “ Tannhaliser,” in which the theme of the Pilgrims’ march, 
austere, lofty, and devout, ends in the throbbing, reckless Bacchanalian 
strain of the Venusberg. 

And then her eyes rested on her daughter. It was a face to make an 
old man young. Its deep, untroubled serenity, the amber-colored wavy 
hair parted on the forehead, and the classic poise of the neck, perfectly 
upright on the shoulders, gave it something of a Greek expression, The 


THE SILENT SEA 


31 


eyes were extremely beautiful, large, dark, and radiant. The eyelashes 
were, if anything, a little too thick and long. They made a shadow 
under the eyes which in repose imparted a pathetic gravity to the face, 
alien to its real expression. The eyebrows, dark and pencilled, were 
exquisitely pure in arch. The slender creamy throat, and the flower-like 
bloom of the face, were thrown into strong relief by the close-fitting 
crimson silk dress she wore. The fond mother took in all these de- 
tails with inexhaustible pleasure. That sweet, fair young face, with its 
unmistakable seal of candor and purity, was a feast for her eyes of 
which she never tired. But as she now regarded her after the lines she 
had read, a sudden pang shot through her heart. Could she in the 
nature of things hope to keep Doris long to herself if they entered the 
busy, self-seeking world, so keenly alive to all the gifts of life — gifts in 
which youth and beauty and money have taken from time immemorial 
the foremost place? 

“ But I should be with her to guide and counsel her, to take care that 
no undue pressure was brought to bear on her,” thought the mother, re- 
reading the last page of her friend’s letter, and then her resolution was 
taken. 

“ Mamma, do you know, you look so very serious !” said Doris, who 
had put away her painting, and now sat on her mother’s foot-stool. 
“ Your eyes are as big as Bed Ridinghood’s when the wolf was going to 
gobble her up.” 

‘‘You disrespectful child!” said the mother, smiling, and then, 
smothering a little sigh, “ Do you know, a great deal of this long letter 
is about you.” 

“ From Mme. de Serziac ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ But what could she find to say about me ?” said Doris, opening her 
eyes wide. 

“ Ah, one may write a long letter about anything almost — a little puss, 
a sunflower, a spider catching a fly, a girl sixteen years old.” 

“Or the wattle- trees, and the Banksia-bushes just coming into flower.” 

“ Perhaps you think you are like the little Banksia rosebuds ?” 

“ No, mother, I have no thorns,” said Doris, rubbing her satin soft 
cheek against her mother’s hand. 

“ What would you say, Doris, to going away from Ouranie, from 
Australia altogether — far across the seas?” 

“On a carpet like Prince Kumar-al-Zaman’s, mother?” 

“ I am quite in earnest, dear.” 

Doris looked out through the window, and did not at once reply. 

“ I thought you would be pleased, Doris. . . . We should go to see 
Mme. de Serziac, and May, and Estella, and Raoul.” 


32 


THE SILENT SEA 


‘‘Yes, mother, I would be glad; only it seems as if the time would 
never come. So many, many years we have spoken of it ! If you said, 
‘ Doris, put on your hat with the white ostrich-feathers, and your long 
Suede gloves, and come away to Bagdad — tell Shung he need not bring 
in afternoon tea,’ then you would see how high I would skip for joy !” 

“But, dear, I mean that we should go quite soon now,” said Mrs. 
Lindsay, a little startled at the sudden vehemence in Doris’s voice. “ She 
has thoughts and longings and impatiences, then, which she keeps to 
herself, just as I have my long memories, my solitary hours of communion 
and introspection,” thought Mrs. Lindsay. It was a sudden curious 
glimpse into that unknown incommunicable depth of inner personality 
which encompasses each human soul, dividing it in some measure from 
every other — friend from friend, husband from wife ; yes, even mother 
from child. 

“How soon, mother?” said Doris, with sudden interest, awaiting her 
mother’s reply with flushing cheeks and lips slightly parted. 

“ This is the ninth of August,” answered Mrs. Lindsay slowly, and then 
she consulted a small diary. “ There is a Messageries mail-boat going on 
the tenth of next month. Suppose we fix that date for our departure, 
darling ?” 

“Oh, mamma, next month! And leave everything behind us, except 
our clothes and Shung-Loo ?” 

“And our memories, dear,” said Mrs. Lindsay, who was bravely strug- 
gling to keep a smiling face. “ We should have to leave a few days be- 
fore the vessel sailed — say four days — so we have less than four more 
weeks at Ouranie.” 

“And Gauwari and the Silent Sea, mother. But how strange it will 
be to leave it all, and all the people we know 1” 

The girl’s face had grown suddenly graver. 

As for Mrs. Lindsay, she went into her own room, feeling that the 
emotion with which she was struggling must soon overcome her com- 
posure. 


CHAPTER V. 

The succeeding days went by very rapidly. Hardly one passed with- 
out a visit to Buda, the township six miles off, or the Peppermint Ranges, 
only three miles in an opposite direction from the home station. 

At the latter, Mrs. Lindsay had formed a little school for the rather 
wild and neglected children of the splitters who worked there. Her un- 


THE SILENT SEA 


33 


varying love and goodness had exercised a strong influence on the chil- 
dren and parents. She had had a little weatherboard building erected — 
an ediflce bought in town from a builder all ready to be put together — 
and here on most days of the week she had assembled the seven or nine 
children who were old enough to be taught. When unable to go herself, 
Mrs. Lindsay used to send Doris and the wife of her manager, who lived 
in a cottage at the opposite side of the garden. 

In the township, too, Mrs. Lindsay was a constant and eagerly-looked- 
for visitor. Few sights were more welcome to the residents than that of 
the Ouranie buggy, with the two gray ponies that Doris liked best to drive. 

No township could cover a wider area in proportion to its inhabitants 
than Buda did. The forty nondescript dwellings which composed it were 
scattered over an incredible number of acres. Perhaps the immense plain 
on whose borders Buda was pitched had exercised some influence on the 
imagination of the first selectors. It would seem a tame and creeping 
arrangement, to be closely packed in view of that measureless expanse of 
country. But the' oldest resident had a different theory. The oldest 
resident kept a general store and post-office ; thus it will be seen that he 
had unrivalled opportunities for impressing his own views on the public. 
Regarding the distance that separated the inhabitants, his view was, that 
when the township was laid out the belief was current that the govern- 
ment intended to bring the Great Northern line of railway bang through 
Buda. Thus every man who pitched his tent, or bark hut, or wattle and 
daub lean-to, or weatherboard cottage, used his own judgment as to the 
spot that would be fixed on for the railway-station. 

“ Every man Jack of us expected to make his fortune, if only he got 
his nose against the railway-station, and every one thought his own 
opinion sounder than his neighbor’s. So here we are, dispersed as far 
as the boundaries of the township would let us — some far beyond them 
— and yet not one of us was on the job,” the storekeeper would say 
with a sigh. 

The Great Northern Railway passed within four miles of the township, 
with only a siding at the nearest point thereto. Henceforth Buda was 
a blighted community, its sole compensation being that it had a large 
and life-long grievance. 

“ To think, ma’am, as you should have to go four miles farther on to 
a melancholy and miserable siding when you expect a friend from town !” 
the storekeeper was saying to Mrs. Lindsay one afternoon within ten 
days of the date she had fixed for her departure. 

“It is from the North my friend is coming, and, you know, half a 
loaf is better than none,” answered Mrs. Lindsay, smiling. 

She could not look upon the siding as an insult, a trait which some 
of the Buda people regarded as the one weakness of her character. 

3 


34 


THE SILENT SEA 


It would only have cost the colony an additional twenty thousand 
pounds to bring the railway to their door. And what was that out of 
the millions that were being borrowed ? 

“ It is all very well for them that has horses and buggies,” the store- 
keeper said to a customer an hour later, as he saw Mrs. Lindsay’s trap 
returning, Doris driving, while her mother and the friend they had gone 
to meet were deep in conversation. 

“ I believe it’s Mrs. Challoner, the manager’s sister, and Miss Doris’s 
old governess,” said the customer, going to the door of the store to get 
a nearer view. 

She had been a servant at Ouranie for some years before she married 
and settled at Buda, and still took the strongest interest in all that con- 
cerned Mrs. Lindsay. 

As the buggy drew near the store, Doris stopped the horses, so that 
they might speak to their old servant, and have some purchases put into 
the buggy that they had made on their way to the siding. They heard 
how Jemima’s second baby had cut his first double-tooth, and how the 
first was growing out of all his clothes. 

“ I suppose you don’t remember me, ma’am ?” said Jemima, glancing 
at the visitor, a pale little lady with bright, kindly eyes. ‘‘ You came 
to my place with Mrs. Lindsay when you were up nearly two years ago. 
The moment I saw you I said to the storekeeper, ‘That is Mrs. Ohal- 
loner.’ I was so very sorry to hear of your house being burned 
down.” 

As they drove away, Mrs. Lindsay promised to come to see Jemima 
once more before her departure. She stood looking after the buggy with 
a wistful expression. 

“ Bless their hearts, it will be an awful miss when they’re gone !” she 
said to the storekeeper. “ I don’t never expect to see Mrs. Lindsay back. 
She is looking dreadful white and thin, to my mind.” 

Nor was Jemima alone in this opinion. Mrs. Challoner was much 
struck with the alteration in her friend’s appearance since last seeing 
her. Mrs. Challoner had married from Ouranie, six years previously, a 
squatter in the Salt-bush country, who was then in affluent circum- 
stances ; but four years ago a terrible drought, followed by the increasing 
ravages of the rabbits, had almost ruined him. To crown all, a fire had 
broken out nine months ago which levelled the head station to the 
ground. Mrs. Challoner had visited Ouranie once a year since she left 
it, and this accident had happened since her last visit. Mrs. Lindsay 
had insisted on replacing the furniture, and the Challoners had been 
able to secure a good dwelling-house near Colmar, which was within four 
miles of the home station. This was naturally one of the first topics of 
conversation between the two friends. 


THE SILENT SEA 


35 


“ It was most fortunate the house was empty — in fact, it has not been 
occupied for years, and now we shall be able to leave the district, when 
the lease of our run expires at Christmas — the date to which we took 
the house. Oh, my dear, I have had to tell you of so many misfor- 
tunes, and now I have to tell you a piece of good news.” 

“ Mrs. Lucy, has your ship really come in ?” said Doris, turning to 
her former governess with a beaming smile. 

My dear, it has really and truly,” answered Mrs. Challoner, with an 
answering smile on her face. 

In the old days, Doris, from constantly hearing her mother address 
Miss Murray as Lucy, had called her Miss Lucy, and the sound of her 
name on the girFs lips had grown so dear to the ex-governess that she 
would not allow her to relinquish its use. 

The story of the ship which had reached port was soon told. Some 
years before Mrs. Challoner had intrusted all her savings to her brother- 
in-law, a broker in Sydney, to invest as he thought most prudent. He 
had put the money — £500 in all — in Broken Hill shares, while the pros- 
pects of the mine were still uncertain ; now the investment was worth 
£6000, and bringing in an annual income of £600. 

So Robert and his brother will be able to see their mother, after all. 
We are going to London directly after Christmas,” said Mrs. Challoner. 

Doris, on hearing this, said they had better come on the tenth of 
September. 

‘‘The same thought has occurred to me,” said Mrs. Lindsay. “We 
are going by a French boat, as I told you, Lucy, because we can so 
quickly get from Marseilles to Mentone; and the route would be very 
little longer for you ; I feel that the sea will do me good, but I dread a 
long land journey.” 

“ And I would teach Euphemia French on the voyage, when there 
would be no sea-serpents to look at,” put in Doris, with a saucy smile 
at her mother, who had within the last few weeks been urging her to 
greater diligence in that language. (Euphemia, aged eighteen, was Mrs. 
Challoner’s step-daughter.) But there were insuperable obstacles to this 
arrangement. 

“ Robert has to sell off the stock, and he wants his son to come with 
us. He is now pearling in Western Australia,” answered Mrs. Challoner. 
“I would ask you to delay your departure, so that we might travel 
together, dear Mrs. Lindsay, only you need the change, I am sure.” 

“And you know, Lucy, when you make up your mind to have your 
teeth out, it is dreadful to have to wait too long,” answered Mrs. Lind- 
say in a low voice ; and though she tried to maintain a cheerful manner, 
it became evident to Mrs. Challoner that the prospect of leaving Ouranie 
was a serious trial to her friend. 


36 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ I do not wonder you are loath to leave it, dear Mrs. Lindsay ; it is 
such a lovely, peaceful spot ! Oh, the relief of seeing such a place after 
living at Colmar !” 

They were now in sight of the home station, which, with its detached 
groups of houses, looked like a little village. The dwelling-house, with 
a kitchen and servants’ quarters semi-detached behind it, was on a slight 
rise. On the western side of the large shadowy garden was the man- 
ager’s house, coach-house, stable, and store-rooms. A quarter of a mile 
to the southwest lay the wool-shed, with its pens and yards ; near it a 
long, low dwelling for the shearers, known as the “men’s hut,” and 
close to this two small cottages for the knock-about hands and their 
wives. Mrs. Lindsay made a point of having only married men engaged 
on the station. In a place so remote from general society, she was of 
opinion that it was not good for man to be alone. 

“ Oh, the garden is as full of flowers as ever !” cried Mrs. Challoner, 
as they drove through part of it to the front of the house. The garden 
at Ouranie was watered from the lake by a windmill, and this fact 
speaks volumes to those who know something of the fertility of Austra- 
lian ground under copious irrigation. To Doris it had always been a 
charmed region, in which she had spent many hours daily. Early in the 
winter the first sweet violets began to make their presence known with 
their penetrating fragrance. A little later the almond-trees were crowned 
in an unbroken wreath of faint pink or moonlight-colored cups, and 
the bowls of the white and purple anemones quivered on their slender 
stalks in a way that made Doris say winter was the dearest season of all. 

But as the spring advanced and the great snowy clusters of the guelder- 
rose tossed themselves in the air, like a juggler throwing a hundred balls 
aloft in one moment, and the deep Bruckmansia bells, with the delicate 
tracery of their softly curved rims, were perpetu,ally haunted with the 
hum of bees, while the vivid tones of crimson and purple passion-flowers 
made deep snatches of color on every side, and the stems of the narcissi 
and jonquils bent under their fragrant loads — these surely were the 
dearest days of all. Leaves and flowers everywhere, and the whole air 
rifted with the songs of birds. . . . And yet, as the heat of summer 
advanced and on every side tall rose-bushes were bent under glowing 
cataracts of roses, and the ground was strewn with fruits, which were so 
thickly clustered on each branch that the idlest wind which blew carried 
some away; when through the crimsoned air of evening, palpitating 
with intense heat, a long array of water-fowl might be seen winging 
their flight to the unperishing waters of Gauwari, this season, too, had 
its own unique charms. 

And autumn, with its shorter days and cooler nights, with its gray 
tints stealing softly into the hard blue of the sky, while trees from the 


THE SILENT SEA 


37 


' old country broke into strange hectic flushes that gradually paled, till 
the leaves fell to the ground in noiseless showers, this, too, had its own 
subtle fascination. Myriads of roses still remained, countless asters, 
delicately vivid verbenas, galliardias, and geraniums beyond number — all 
these were feverishly aflame. 

Day and night, twilight and dawn, the soft gradations of the Austra- 
lian year, as the seasons came and departed ; the sonorous voices of the 
wind when it rose to a great gale on a winter night, the whispering 
cadences of the breezes through the needle-leaved she-oaks on a summer 
evening; the return and departure of migratory birds — all these were 
entrancing pages in a book of which Doris never wearied. . . . When 
the old vines, arid-looking as the stems of ancient grass-sticks, began to 
kindle into gadding tendrils and woolly buds, the girl would watch 
them, day by day, till in the still, warm evenings of September flocks of 
them would be found transformed into golden green — more like the tips 
of flames than growing leaves. Later the roof of the wide arcade, that 
ran through the length of the garden, would be a net-work of leaves so 
densely woven that the fiercest sunbeams, beating on its roof, could find 
no admission, except in a warm, jonquil light, flushing myriads of clusters 
into perfect ripeness. Where did they all get their wonderful colors — 
the crimson rose and the ivory-colored lily, the purple grape and the 
carmine-flushed peach, all swelling out of tiny oblong buds, at first 
hardly thicker than a thread? These miracles of nature, yearly re- 
newed, were for Doris never masked by the indiflerence which so often 
comes of familiarity. Her early intimacy with nature developed a talent 
for observation and a faculty for taking pains which became the strongest 
discipline of h^r life. 

There was so much to learn, and the lore she gathered was more en- 
thralling than any tales of fairy adventures, for underlying all there was 
a magic which could never be exhausted nor explained. 

The vast melancholy waste of illimitable plain, that stretched into the 
gray distance to the east and north, would make the casual traveller, on 
reaching Ouranie, keenly realize how beautiful it was, with its softly 
swelling rises, its park-like woods, and wide, permanent lake. But no 
casual observer could know how every tree and nook round the head 
station throbbed with life and interest for the solitary child, who from 
her infancy had learned to keep long vigils on all things that grew and 
lived around. 

She knew when the first broods of the shell-parrots would flit through 
the pale honey-colored blossoms of the gum-trees, and when the young 
laughing-jackasses were fledged, and learned to take their first grotesque 
flights with solemn awkwardness. She had learned when to look for 
the wild swans and ducks, hatching their young in the coverts of Gau- 


88 


THE SILENT SEA 


wari, and where the snipe and teal oftenest sought their food. She 
knew what honey-birds came in pairs when the wattle-trees first blos- 
somed, and went away in fiocks when the blossoms were over. The full, 
clear notes of the singing honey-bird, which her mother likened to the 
missel-thrush ; the rapid chirps of the long-billed kind ; the single note, 
long drawn out, with its short note quickly repeated, of the fulvous- 
fronted ones; the grating cry of the black-throated, and the harsh, 
quarrelsome note of the wattle-bird — she recognized them all, and 
watched them clinging head downwards like little acrobats among the 
honeyed blossoms they rified with greedy haste from day to day. 

There must be a mother-snipe somewhere in the ti-tree; the father- 
bird keeps on piping and flying all alone,” she would say, and spend 
most of a long afternoon down by the lake till she discovered the where- 
abouts of the mother-bird. She loved to see the eyes of birds in their 
nests when they caught sight of a human face. No moccasined Indian 
or Australian black in Kooditcha shoes could tread more softly than she 
did, when, from day to day, she stole to look at the water-fowls that 
hatched their young on the borders of the lake. Here she would sit so 
quietly under the great horizontal arms of an old gum-tree that often- 
times little birds hopped as near her as if she were a shrub. Here she 
loved to watch the little blue wrens taking their feeble flight from one 
tussock of grass to another. They were such poor fliers, but they filled 
the whole air with their ecstatic roundelays, often ending with clear 
silvery tinklings like the chime of fairy bells. Mrs. Lindsay had never 
allowed a shot to be fired in the vicinity since she had come to the sta- 
tion, and this, coupled with its abundant waters and the blossoming gum- 
trees and wattles, made Gauwari a famous resort for birds. 

She could hardly have said which she liked best to watch — birds 
building their nests or buds swelling on the trees and the spear-like tips 
of annuals thrusting their way through the mould. Perhaps the end of 
August, more than any other time of the year, saw Doris linger longest 
in the garden. It was here that Mrs. Challoner found her on the after- 
noon of the third day after she had come to Ouranie. Doris was half 
concealed by the shrubs that grew rather densely on the borders of 
Gauwari where it formed the garden boundary. Here the ground was 
perfectly carpeted with violets. Mrs. Lindsay had an old recipe by 
which she made violet-scent, so that very few of these flowers were 
allowed to wither unseen in the Ouranie garden. Doris was occupied in 
filling a basket with them when Mrs. Challoner found her, directed to the 
spot by the movements of the young sheep-dog who was the girl’s con* 
stant companion. 

“ I have been looking for you, dear, all over the garden,” said Mrs. 
Challoner in a very grave voice. 


THE SILENT SEA 


She had come on a grave errand ; no less than to warn Doris that her 
mother’s health was very precarious. An hour before she had suddenly 
fainted, and had lain for nearly twenty minutes in a half-unconscious 
state. Mrs. Challoner, greatly alarmed, had sent one of the servants to 
the manager’s house to summon her sister-in-law, Mrs. Murray. The 
two had administered the restoratives usual in fainting-fits, and gradually 
Mrs. Lindsay had recovered. Her first words expressed a wish that 
Doris should not know. 

“ I am glad she was not in ; she would be so much alarmed, poor 
darling,” she said tremulously. 

The sisters exchanged glances, and then Mrs. Challoner said, gently, 

“But is it wise to keep her in ignorance, dear? Do you think this is 
the old heart trouble ?” 

“ Oh, yes ; but there is a long interval usually between these attacks ; 
I think this was merely brought on by my inability to sleep well during 
the last few nights, and a sprt of nervous agitation.” 

If Mrs. Challoner had given expression to her thought just then she 
would have urged her friend to prevent her mind from being too much 
concentrated on the invisible world. It seemed to her that the habit of 
abstracting herself from outward things had greatly grown on Mrs. Lind- 
say since she had last seen her. But she shrank from approaching the 
subject. After a little silence Mrs. Lindsay spoke again, 

“ Perhaps it would, on the whole, be wiser, Lucy, if you were to open 
this subject to Doris. I have never taught her to think of death with 
horror.” 

“Of death! But, dear friend, I hope that is still far off,” said Mrs. 
Challoner, with some agitation. 

A faint smile hovered over Mrs. Lindsay’s worn face. 

“ The mysterious pass where two cannot walk side by side, and where 
for an instant souls lose sight of each other,” she murmured softly. “ It 
is only for the child’s sake I could wish this pass were still a little dis- 
tance off. . . . But within the last few days it seems as if the power of 
keeping alive were slowly leaving me. And then I have thought the sea 
air would be a tonic. I think I wrote too long last night ; I was anx- 
ious to post a second letter to my friend, Mme. de Serziac, which she 
will get ten days or so before we land. But I’ll be more careful after 
this. Perhaps, Lucy, it will be better, on the whole, that you should 
speak to Doris. . . . Mrs. Murray will stay with me.” 

It was not until she stood face to face with Doris that Mrs. Challoner 
quite realized the difficulty of her mission. The girl looked so serenely 
happy, so unconscious of any cloud lurking on the horizon of her young- 
life. 

“ Have you been looking for me long, dear?” she said blithely ; “ well, 


40 


THE SILENT SEA 


Fm glad you have come to the violet bank, for you look pale, and if you 
just sit down on this little seat under the wattle — now lean back and hold 
this posy of violets.’’ 

Doris made Mrs. Challoner lean against the back of the little rustic 
bench, and put a great handful of violets on her lap, and then went on 
plucking some more. 

“ Doris, I came to speak to you about something,” said Mrs. Challoner, 
a little faintly. 

‘‘Ah, you do put me in mind of the old days, when I used to write 
such shabby little compositions,” said Doris, laughing merrily. 

Mrs. Challoner was by nature of a timid, shrinking disposition, ex- 
tremely faithful and affectionate, yet without much force of character. 
During the seven years she had lived at Ouranie, she had been more of 
a companion to Mrs. Lindsay than a governess to Doris, who had been 
chiefly taught by her mother. Mrs. Challoner was apt to talk at great 
length and with much animation of things that Doris thought very tri- 
fling. Constant intercourse with a mind as unworldly and disinterested 
as her mother’s had unconsciously made the girl a little scornful of 
themes that take a prominent place in the estimation of the generality 
of women. She was very fond of Mrs. Challoner, and had got into the 
habit of petting her a good deal, without attaching much importance to 
what she said or thought. 

Mrs. Challoner, on her part, had always been of opinion that Mrs. 
Lindsay made Doris’s life too happy and beautiful to be a wise prepara- 
tion for the world in which she must one day live ; that she w^as too 
sedulously guarded from the commoner influences of human intercourse, 
untouched by its vanities and frivolities, knowing nothing of its temp- 
tations, its passions, its incurable miseries ; yet, as the girl’s happy laugh 
rang in her ears, she felt a growing disinclination to fulfil her purpose. 
She looked at her with dimmed eyes as she sat with her large straw hat 
on her lap, the basket of violets at her feet, holding up a peremptory 
finger at her young collie. 

“ Now, Spot, if you put your cold, inquisitive little nose into that 
basket, do you know what will happen?” 

Spot dashed about, keeping his nose to the ground, and circling round 
the basket in a somewhat suspicious manner. 

“ You rogue ! Fll leave you on the station, with the other dogs, in- 
stead of coming abroad to see the world — Samarcand, and the Valley of 
Diamonds, and the palaces of Pekin. But, Mrs. Lucy dear, you haven’t 
told me what you wanted to speak to me about. Ah, I can guess !” she 
said, a mischievous glance coming into her eyes. 

“ What is your guess, dear ?” asked Mrs. Challoner, trying to lead up 
to what she wished to say without being too abrupt. 


THE SILENT SEA 


41 


You want to tell me that fairy-tales are not really true. That Shung- 
Loo’s stories are made up by mandarins, who are foolish and have no 
religion.’’ 

“ No, dear, that is not what I want to say,” answered Mrs. Challoner 
with a somewhat discouraged-looking smile. 

Now, Spot, put your nose to the ground and lie down quite still,” 
cried Doris to the dog, who was in fact gambolling perilously near to 
the basket of violets. Spot obeyed, and then Doris turned to Mrs. Chal- 
loner. “I’ll give only one more guess — You want to make me quite 
understand that the Silent Sea is not a sea, but a great barren plain, 
stretching from Buda to your station and the mine, and past that for 
hundreds of miles, all the way to the Never-never Land?” 

Mrs. Challoner slowly shook her head, and then Doris saw that her 
eyes were dim with tears. In truth, Doris’s every look and gesture made 
her old friend’s heart ache. The girl was so heart-whole, her radiant 
young beauty so untouched by care or apprehension, that the thought 
of revealing to her what might be the great sorrow which would over- 
cast her opening life seemed barbarous and unwise. But Mrs. Challo- 
ner’s uncommunicative sadness suddenly struck a chord of fear in Doris’s 
heart. 

“ Ah, you are afraid to tell me ! Is it anything about mamma ?” 

“Yes, dearie.” 

“ What is it — is she ill ? But no, you would have told me at once.” 

“ She has been ill, Doris, but she is better ; what I want to say to you 
is — oh, my dear, don’t look so frightened, I cannot bear it !” 

“ Tell me, tell me !” cried Doris, breathlessly. 

“ Your mother, darling, has not been strong for years. I don’t think 
you know — indeed, I am sure she has concealed from you how ill she 
often is. About an hour ago she fainted away. It is her heart that is 
affected. I said to her I thought you ought to know how serious it is.” 

“ How serious ! you mean that perhaps — ” Doris could not put into 
words the terrible thought that blanched her face. But she maintained 
her self-possession in a way that surprised Mrs. Challoner. As a matter 
of fact, Doris possessed a great fund of firmness and self-reliance. She 
broke into no tears nor lamentations. During the next few days she 
kept more constantly with her mother, and insisted on taking her place 
in the little school for the splitters’ children in the Peppermint Ranges, 
to which Mrs. Challoner accompanied her each forenoon. And so day 
by day passed until the one before that on which they were to leave 
Ouranie. 


42 


THE SILENT SEA 


CHAPTER YL 

During the night that preceded this day Mrs. Lindsay lay many 
hours awake. When she at last fell asleep, her slumber was fitful and 
broken. Towards morning she suddenly woke up in extreme agitation. 
She thought she had heard Doris calling out, “ Mother ! mother ! moth- 
er !” in piercing tones. When she opened her eyes, with this sound in 
her ears, her heart was throbbing so painfully that for a little time she 
could not move. 

“ It was a dream ; it must have been a dream,” she said, holding her 
hand against her left side, as if to still the stormy beatings of her heart. 
Yet she had no recollection of any event, or any other word that led up 
to this wailing cry. As soon as she could move, she went tremblingly 
to the door that led from her own room into her daughter’s, but all was 
perfectly still. Then she opened the window and looked out. The east 
was faintly touched with the pallor of the coming dawn. The first half- 
drowsy notes of awakening birds began to break the silence of the woods. 
It was the strangely beautiful hour in which nature, as if emerging from 
profound repose, seems to swim gradually back from the oblivion of 
night — all forms and colors spiritualized by the trembling approach 
of a new day. The dark masses of trees motionless as in a picture, 
the pale, unrufiled lake, the deep clear vault of heaven, with a lumi- 
nous reach of light slowly spreading in the Orient — all were solemnly 
tranquil. 

And when the mother once more turned to the dim, sweet chamber of 
her child, it was pervaded by an equal peacefulness. Near the window 
a bowlful of white roses glimmered in the uncertain light; on a little old- 
fashioned spindle table lay an open missal, beside a box of water-colors ; 
on a chair, daintily folded, were the exquisitely wrought undergarments ; 
in the depths of a half-opened wardrobe gleamed some of the crimson 
silk robes that Doris most habitually wore ; and in the little bed, with its 
canopy of soft white Indian silk, the girl lay in a placid sleep, her face, 
with its unruffled serenity, curiously resembling in expression the angel 
children she was so fond of painting. Over the foot of the bed a crim- 
son scarf lay in careless folds. 

This caught the mother’s eyes, and she shivered slightly. In the yet 
dusky light this vivid streak of crimson somehow suggested to her mor- 


THE SILENT SEA 


43 


bidly sensitive eyes the stain of a wounded creature’s blood. She stole 
in softly and removed the scarf. 

Doris moved, and lay with her face towards the window. Her lips 
parted in a soft smile. She murmured a few words in a low, glad voice, 
showing that some happy dream had come to her in sleep. At this the 
agitation and disquiet which had taken so strong a hold on the mother 
was allayed. She went back into her own room, and though she did not 
sleep, she rested until after six. 

Then Shung-Loo, with his invincible punctuality, with which no shadow 
of past or coming events was ever allowed to interfere, tapped at her door, 
and on a little table close to it in the hall left a tray, with two cups of 
creamed chocolate and a little plateful of freshly-baked biscuits. 

Mrs. Lindsay slipped on her dressing-gown and slippers, and took the 
tray into Doris’s room. She had just awakened, and, on seeing her 
mother, started up to return her morning kiss. 

‘‘Is- it really true, mother? Are we going away this very next day, 
into the strange countries where all the strange stories happened ?” 

“ Yes, darling, going to-morrow. But, see, I have brought you your 
chocolate.” 

“ But, mother, how naughty of you *. Promise me you will let me 
wait more on you after this. You know, I am a great thing — half a 
head taller than you.” 

She sat up in bed, holding herself erect, so that even under a silken 
coverlet and in the weakly feminine folds of snowy lace that fell round 
her throat and slender white hands her heroic proportions should become 
evident. 

“ I promise you, Doris,” said the mother, smiling fondly. “ I dare 
say I shall soon grow stout and lazy, and let you come after me with my 
footstool and wrap ; the voyage will be a fine opportunity. I wonder if 
the sea will make my little girl ill ?” 

“ Oh no — not a bit. Mother, I remember being on the sea quite well, 
and I dreamed of it a little before I woke. Do you remember how blue 
it used to look from the Adelaide hills ? And father sometimes took us 
sailing in a boat, you know, when we went to the sea-side in the sum- 
mer.” 

As always in mentioning her father, Doris’s voice sank tenderly ; and, 
as was her habit on such occasions, the mother pressed her child’s hand. 

“ I remember, Dorrie ; and you were quite a brave little sailor. Papa 
used to hold you up when the sea-gulls flew by, and you clapped your lit- 
tle hands with joy.” 

“Mother, I hope there will be great white sea-gulls, and albatrosses 
with wide, wide wings, and enormous sea-serpents, with green and gold 
eyes, sailing along with our ship,” said Doris, her cheeks beginning to 


44 


THE SILENT SEA 


flush at the thought of all the great, vague wonders that might open out 
before her on leaving the calm monotony of Ouranie. 

Her mother smiled, shaking her head. 

“Now, mammy, don’t tell me that there are no sea-serpents,” said 
Doris gayly. “ I shall tell the captain to go to Sindbad’s island, and to 
Ispahan. Oh, you don’t know half the places we are to see !” 

Doris sipped a little chocolate, but she could not eat even one biscuit. 
Now that the hour of departure drew so near, the glad excitement of it 
all fairly carried her away. 

“ And the sea you saw in your sleep, Doris, was it blue and calm as we 
used to see it on summer days long ago?” asked her mother wistfully. 

“ No, I think it was stormy ; and I was looking for you, mother, but 
I could not find you. Naughty little mother, where did you go ? And 
why are you looking so pale again this morning, and dark under the 
eyes ? Don’t you hope the sea will be rough sometimes, mother, so that 
the waves will rise high with a white fringe to them, as they look in that 
picture in your bedroom ?” 

But the mother’s heart, so sorely shaken by the tempests of life, was 
less adventurous. An old petition she had somewhere read long ago rose 
in her memory : 

“ Grant, O God, that this sea may be to us and to all who sail upon it 
tranquil and quiet. To this end we pray. Hear us, good Lord !” 

Doris could no longer linger over her chocolate. 

“It is right down to my little toes, mother — the gladness of going !” 
she said, springing out of bed, and disappearing behind the pink chintz 
curtains that were drawn round her plunge-bath. 

Her mother had been so much better these last two days that Doris, 
with the buoyant disbelief of youth in sorrow, had come to believe that 
the insidious weakness which for some days had prostrated her was quite 
passing away. Mrs. Murray was still very anxious, and Mrs. Challoner 
hopeful and uneasy by turns. Shung-Loo, the faithful Chinese servant, 
said nothing, but was in these days always hovering near his mistress. 
Shung was a marked personality in the Ouranie household. His con- 
nection with the family began in a curious way. At seventeen years of 
age he had been on the point of committing suicide at Canton, on ac- 
count of failing to pass a literary examination. He had been rescued 
by Mr. Lindsay, the son of the British Consul in that city. Shung be- 
came the young man’s personal servant, and devoted himself heart and 
soul to his interest. He was equally devoted to his late master’s widow 
and daughter. He was now over forty years of age, and his savings 
amounted to a sum that would keep him in competence in his native 
land, to which he hoped ultimately to return. 

Shung’s wages were paid to him half-yearly — thirty pounds in six five- 


THE SILENT SEA 


45 


pound notes. He did not like checks, and Mrs. Lindsay indulged his 
prejudice. On receiving this money, Shung would count it over carefully, 
fingering each note with respectful affection. He would put the amount 
into a well-worn pocket-book, carry it about with him, and put it under 
his pillow at night for a week ; then he would bring it back to Mrs. 
Lindsay, and ask her to keep it for him with the rest at six per cent. 
The amount would be entered in his pass-book, and Shung would cover 
a sheet of rice-paper with strange characters, making elaborate calcula- 
tions as to the increase which this new deposit made to his capital and 
income. Shung was, as a rule, up to his eyes in work, cheerful, capable, 
and immovably calm. But at times a great melancholy would steal over 
him. At such seasons, Mrs. Lindsay, always a little apprehensive of that 
side of his character which had so early led him to the thought of self- 
destruction, would urge him to return to his own country. 

“You have enough money now, Shung, and some of your relations are 
still living. You will be able to keep a wife, and have a pretty garden 
and a rice-field of your own,” she would say to him, and Shung would 
listen with a half-pleased, half-wistful smile. 

Who knows what visions of the Flowery Land, and of the almond- 
eyed little Mongolian babies who might be born to him, visited his im- 
agination ? Yet, though exile had for him something of that “consump- 
tion of the soul ” which takes the savor out of life, his attachment to his 
mistress and his old home, and doubtless, too, the fascination of rapidly 
accumulating capital, had always hitherto won the day. 

“ When you and Miss Dolis go, then me go too,” he would say. 

It was his intention to accompany them to France as their trusted and 
indefatigable servant, and then to take ship from there to Canton. 

He was pasting on labels and cording up boxes in the hall, when, at 
four o’clock on that afternoon, Doris came to ask if there was not some- 
thing she could do. 

“Maman is sleeping now,” she said, “and Mrs. Murray is near her, 
tacking a ruffle round the neck of my travelling-cloak. Everything I 
begin to do some one else comes and finishes it. Now, Shung, there 
must be something I can do ?” 

“Yes, Miss Dolis. You go out and take you walk lound Gauwali. 
Missee Challonel,” said Shung, turning to the latter as she came into the 
hall out of the room she occupied, “ you vely good, vely kind. Take 
oul young lady out to see big sky and bilds. She not out all day ; too 
muchee visitols.” 

Mrs. Challoner promptly responded to this appeal. It was true that 
on this last day many callers had come from near and far. As Mrs. 
Lindsay could not be allowed to over-exert herself, Doris had been much 
to the fore, and had not been out of the house all day. 


46 


THE SILENT SEA 


I suppose- that has hardly ever happened in your life before, except 
when you had the fever,” said Mrs. Challoner, as the two walked slowly 
round the lake. 

“And once, two years ago, when mother was a little ill,” answered 
Doris. She stood and drew in full breaths of the fresh air, which had in 
it poignant wafts of scent from the wattle-trees that were now in full blos- 
som on the border of the lake, where they had been planted at intervals 
the year she was born. “ How strange it will be at first,” she said, “ to 
be so far from our own birds and trees and sky, and the great Silent 
Sea !” she added, looking towards the northeast, where, beyond the 
wooded rises that surrounded Ouranie on all sides, the great rolling plain 
was visible, which, sixty miles beyond Buda, turned into the arid Salt- 
bush country. 

“ Oh, my dear, the great sounding ocean will be much more entertain- 
ing than the Silent Sea,” returned Mrs. Challoner; “when you are fairly 
in that country, the gray look of it, the thirst that never seems satisfied, 
and the awful quiet, seem to take the heart out of you.” 

They were approaching a slight rise which was crowned with a group 
of she-oak trees known as the Brotherhood. Spot coaxed his mistress to 
take a run with him. When she reached the Brotherhood and looked 
eastward for a minute or two, she gave a little cry of joy and danced 
half-way back to Mrs. Challoner, crying, 

“ Guess who is coming — guess before you look !” 

“ What a picture the child makes!” thought Mrs. Challoner, looking at 
lier with fond admiration. Hers w^as one of those rare faces never seen 
to such advantage as under the searching light of day. The fresh air 
brought a warmer tinge of color into her cheeks, her great radiant eyes 
were sparkling ; her eyelashes no longer cast a shadow under them, the 
amber tint of her hair w^as intensified by the sunlight. As she ran down 
from the Brotherhood on tiptoe, and stood on the margin of the lake 
with its reeds and tall grasses, bending and murmuring in the fitful 
breezes with its wide, calm surface, absorbing the opulent afternoon sun- 
shine, it would seem as though there were some subtle aflSnity between 
her and these wooing sights and sounds of nature. 

“ Who can it be ?” said Mrs. Challoner with an answering smile, but 
regarding Doris so intently that she gave little thought to her question. 

“ It is Kenneth Campbell, and he has a gray horse this time with Jerry. 
What can have become of Eozinante ?” 

It was the first question she put to the old man when they met. 

“ Rozinante fell lame at the Mulga Ranges, Miss Dorrie, and I had to 
leave her. How do you find yourself to-day, ma’am ?” he said, standing 
with uncovered head as Mrs. Challoner shook hands with him with the 
cordiality of an old friend. 


THE SILExXT SEA 


47 


Kenneth Campbell had been for fourteen years a shepherd on the 
Ouranie run, living most of the time entirely alone. Four years pre- 
viously he had given up shepherding, and bought a snug little farm in 
partnership with a younger brother, but in a short time he wearied of 
farming. He bought a hawker’s wagon, and stocked it with religious 
books and publications, and returned to the district with which he had 
been so long familiar, travelling in a very leisurely fashion from station 
to station, and from one small township to the other. 

There was something in his appearance that contrasted oddly with his 
nominal vocation. He was tall and lean, with a narrow face and narrow 
stooping shoulders, on which a long gray alpaca coat hung loosely. He 
had a high furrowed brow, a thin aquiline nose, long gray moustachios 
and whiskers, while his hair fell in silvery locks on his shoulders. His 
whole face and bearing conveyed an impression of refinement, even be- 
nevolence, though he had the indescribable air of one who holds little 
communion with his kind ; sometimes for days he would be silent as a 
dumb man. At such times there would be a brooding, semi-prophetic 
look in his large brown eyes, and in his face an air of abstraction as com- 
plete as if the world and all that it contained were as remote from his 
thoughts as one of the fixed stars. At other times he would be pos- 
sessed by an irresistible impulse to give expression to the thoughts which 
rose in his mind, and he would do so with forcible, nervous eloquence in 
a soft, flexible voice, with that half -plaintive cadence which sometimes 
marks the utterance of Scottish Highlanders. 

People said that his long solitude, and the mystical sort of books he 
read day and night, had unhinged his mind ; and there may have been 
some truth in the supposition. It is certain that his most rooted and 
ardent ambition was to do good to his fellow-creatures, “ to save souls 
from perdition,” as he himself would say, though perdition and damna- 
tion with him meant moral evil rather than material torments. With his 
bookselling he combined voluntary and unpaid missionary work, holding 
impromptu services for station hands, splitters, miners, and carters, or even 
for a solitary shepherd or hut-keeper who was willing to give him a hear- 
ing. He would on occasion take incredible trouble over some poor be- 
lated man who had fallen a victim to evil habits in the isolated life of 
the remote Bush. 

Mrs. Lindsay had from the first recognized the rare qualities of mind 
and nature which distinguished Kenneth, and through her Mrs. Challoner 
had learned to esteem him. He had been shepherding at Ouranie when 
she lived there, and since her marriage she had seen him from time to 
time at her own home, and lately at Colmar — always with an increased 
longing that he would settle down comfortably on his little farm. 

“ You are just in time to see Mrs. Lindsay and her daughter before 


48 


THE SILENT SEA 


they leave, Kenneth,” said Mrs. Challoner, after the first greetings were 
over. 

“Yes, yes, but it little matters in our span-length of time whether we 
say farewells. The great thing is that our spirits should meet at the 
throne of grace,” he murmured absently. 

Mrs. Challoner thought he looked thinner than ever, and as if more 
rapt in those m usings in which mundane events were but as straws in the 
balance ; when thus absorbed he would often lose all thought of creature 
comforts. It was many years since he had given up animal food, and he 
seldom ate more than twice in the twenty-four hours, his food consisting 
for the most part of a quart-pot full of tea and a slice or two of damper 
— “ unleavened bread,” as he used to call it. 

“ I don’t believe you have been well, Kenneth. Oh, I wish you would 
live on the farm once more! We should all be more comfortable to think 
of you under shelter with your brother than living this lonely life,” said 
Mrs. Challoner, her anxiety for him increasing as she noticed the deep 
hollow circles round his eyes and the nervous, fieshless look of his hands. 

He was watching Doris as she skimmed beside the water’s edge, look- 
ing at some water-birds that had newly arrived ; but as Mrs. Challoner 
spoke he turned to her with a kindling look. 

“ But why should not all friends be comfortable about me, dear Mrs. 
Challoner ? Death is the thing that the children of men dread most ; 
and how many more die safe and sheltered in their beds than elsewhere? 
Wherever we may be on this piece of beguiling, well-lustred clay we call 
the earth, our lives must pass like snow-water ; and often it is better 
passed in the wilds than otherwhere.” 

The old man’s eyes glowed ; his face lit up with a pale, spiritual light. 
Mrs. Challoner recognized that he was in one of those moods of exaltation 
in which the presence of a fellow-creature roused him to utter some of 
the thoughts that had else passed in smother. 

“ A writer of the East says,” he went on, after a little pause, “ that 
there are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast 
horizon. And where in all the world shall you find it so wide and clear 
as on the great Salt-bush plains? There, ‘like a man beloved of God,’ 
have I often stood at the dawn, and the earth lay view beyond view, with 
no a tree, no a mole-hill to break the sight, and the air as pure as if man 
was never created. Even in a region where there is no water, no grass, 
where the Salt-bush itself has withered, where the very scorpion perishes, 
man, if so minded, can draw nearer to the Eternal than among throngs of 
his fellow-creatures, eager to barter their immortal souls for the loan of a 
piece of dead clay, for the painted image of a worm-eaten happiness — 
Esau’s mess of pottage. No, no; do not fear for me, dear friend. Lonely 
we come into the world, recognizing no soul, able only to greet ; alone 


THE SILENT SEA 


49 


must we pass through the Dark Valley. It is but fitting that between 
two such strange journeys, so mysterious a coming, so solemn a depart- 
ure, we should oftentimes be solitary.” 

“Cowdie — Cowdie ! come away and have a run with Spot, and tell 
him if you know these water-fowls !” cried Doris, her clear, glad tones 
ringing across the sombre utterances of the old shepherd like the trill of 
a bird heard in the darkness. 

Cowdie was Kenneth’s collie-dog, whose grandparents he had brought 
with him from the rugged mountains of Argyllshire sixteen years pre- 
viously. He was lying at his master’s feet with his head fiat on the 
ground, showing the whites of his eyes, as he glanced up now and then, 
waiting for his master’s word of command. 

“ Go, Cowdie ! go to Miss Doris,” said Kenneth ; and the dog in- 
stantly responded to the girl’s call with the fleetness of a greyhound. 

‘‘ Where were you last night, Kenneth ?” asked Mrs. Challoher, anxious 
to divert Kenneth’s thoughts from what she felt to be a very melancholy, 
if not morbid, groove. 

“ At the boundary hut — the one five miles from here, between Ouranie 
and Mr. White’s run — where I shepherded in my time for nearly ten 
years. But all that time nothing happened so strange as what took place 
last night. It was after ten. I was reading in my wagon when all at 
once I heard a loud, sharp scream — the scream of a woman.” 

Kenneth paused, looking into the distance as if awaiting some ap- 
proaching sight or sound. 

‘‘ And who was it, Kenneth ?” asked Mrs. Challoner, with agitated in- 
terest. 

‘‘ I am not quite sure, ma’am ; but I will tell you all I know. As soon 
as I heard that cry I ran to the spot it seemed to come from. Perhaps 
you know the stringy-bark grows very thick round the boundary hut ? I 
could see or hear nothing. Then I stood and gave a long, loud cooey. 
As the sound was dying away, I thought I heard a curious cry, as if one 
called and it was suddenly stopped. On that I began to search again. I 
went round and round for more than two hours. Then I thought of 
stories I had heard of strange creatures with strange cries in the Bush 
that white people have never seen, and I tried to believe it was not a 
human being. Yet I felt I was trying to put a lie on myself. I went 
back to my wagon, but I could not sleep ; so I lit my little lamp and 
read for some time longer. Then I got sleepy, and I was just going to 
put out my lamp, when I heard the sound of running — of some one pass- 
ing quickly with naked feet. I jumped up and ran out; I saw some- 
thing like shadows disappearing among the trees, one after the other. I 
did not know what I ought to do. My lamp was burning, and I thought 
if it was one in danger or lost he would surely make for the light. I 
4 


50 


THE SILENT SEA 


turned up the lamp higher, and fastened bach the flap of my tarpaulin, 
so that the light would shine out through the trees, and any creature 
lost or distressed could see it. I looked at my watch ; it was one o’clock 
in the morning. About half an hour later I heard voices ; I went out, 
and two men, spent with running, came up to me — ” 

‘‘ Two men ?” said Mrs. Challoner, who was listening with painful in- 
tentness. 

Yes, two black fellows. One of them, an old man, half naked, and 
bleeding from a wound in his side ; the other a younger man, one that I 
knew by sight — he worked for some time on the Noomoolloo Station — 
Mr. White’s, you’ll remember. The old man yelled out something in 
the native language. I only understood nape,” which means wife. 
Then the younger man asked me if I had seen any women. I told 
him I had not, and asked him if it was black women he was looking for. 
He said one was half-caste, the younger almost white, and both dressed 
like white women. Then they said they must look in my wagon ; I held 
the lamp, and let them search all through it. The old man’s wound kept 
on bleeding ; now and then he wiped the blood away with his hand, and 
he got it over his face. He was awful enough without that. I have never 
seen any one in the shape of a human creature so like what we might 
suppose the father of darkness to be.” 

“Kenneth, these poor creatures — do you think they were from Noo- 
moolloo ?” said Mrs. Challoner hesitatingly. 

“ Ay, ma’am, they were the mother and daughter. Two miles from 
here I met a boundary rider of White’s, and he told me the poor half- 
caste woman and White’s daughter had run away two days ago for fear 
of being separated.” 

Here Doris came tripping back, followed by the dogs, and the subject 
was dropped. She and Mrs. Challoner returned by the path bordering 
the lake. 

When Kenneth visited Ouranie, he always stopped at the house of Mr. 
Murray, the manager. To get there he had to turn more to the west. 

“Come in soon after you take the horses out, Kenneth,” said Mrs. 
Challoner in parting. “ Mrs. Lindsay will want to talk to you for a little 
time, and she keeps early hours just now. We want her to be strong 
and fresh for the journey.” 

Kenneth promised to come early, and then slowly led his horses on 
their way. The evil that is in the world, active and implacable, laying 
waste so many lives, oftentimes weighed heavily on his mind, making his 
face sombrely earnest, with something of a fiery eagerness, like one cry- 
ing in the wilderness, and ready to denounce a world ripe for judgment. 


THE SILENT SEA 


51 


CHAPTER VII. 

A LITTLE time after the conversation between Mrs. Challoner and Ken- 
neth Campbell had come to an end, another encounter took place at Ou- 
ranie that afternoon near the wool-shed. Mr. Murray, the manager, was 
inspecting some repairs that had been made to the pens, behind this 
building, when he saw a man riding up who turned out to be Mr. White, 
of Noomoolloo. “ He has either lost a lot of money in town, or one of 
his best horses,” thought Murray as he greeted his neighbor. It turned 
out, however, that it was neither of these losses which gave so lowering 
an expression to White’s face. 

“ Have you seen any one belonging to me about here ?” he asked, in a 
gruff voice, after dismounting. 

Do you mean man or cattle ? I saw Crosbie—” 

“ No, Koroona and her mother.” 

“ You — you don’t mean — ” 

Yes, damn it, I do ! They’ve cleared — run away. I believe they’re 
somewhere about here. They haven’t gone to Buda nor to the siding.” 

“ Koroona out in the woods ?” repeated Murray, with a sort of stupid 
unbelief. 

“ Yes, perhaps among the wild niggers that were on their way to the 
corroborree near Wilkietown. Isn’t that a proper sort of place for a girl 
with four silk dresses to her back, who cost me nearly one hundred pounds 
a year at school for three years ? And now she’s skedaddled with that 
half-caste old mother of hers ! By the Lord — ” 

White was a man celebrated for the large and varied stock of sulphu- 
rous language at his command. Murray waited with an uncommitted 
sort of expression till his neighbor had finished cursing, and then asked, 

“But why did the mother run away ?” 

“Because I told her she must clear next day.” 

“Next day?” 

“Yes, next day, yesterday, before I began shearing. Not to clear into 
the woods, mind you — nothing of the sort. I was going to allow her 
thirty shillings a week as long as she lived — and that’s not for very long, 
if I’m not mistaken. She had a cough, as I dare say you’ve noticed, that 
you could hear half a mile off. In fact, I made sure she would have 
turned up her toes months ago.” 


52 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ And why in God’s name did you think of turning her off just now ?” 
said Murray, with a sombre light in his eyes. He was a big, strong man, 
with a weather-tanned face, his hair and long brown beard grizzled with 
gray. He was undemonstrative in manner, reticent, and rather taciturn 
as a rule. But he had strong sympathies and an active imagination, and 
was as easily moved to pity as a woman, with the difference that the 
feeling was intolerable to him if it could be translated into action. He 
was w^ell acquainted with the poor half-caste who had faced the perils of 
the woods rather than submit to separation from her only child. As he 
recalled her, with her timid eyes and shy, kindly ways, cut off from her 
own people, avoided by others, her health ruined, meek and submissive 
always to this tyrant, who talked of her more heartlessly than he would 
of one of his sheep or cattle, he felt half choked with disgusted anger. 

‘‘ Why ? Just because I couldn’t wait any longer — I’ve been on the 
loose too long. I’m going to turn a respectable. God-fearing, top-hat 
man on the fifteenth of this month, at eleven o’clock in the morning, at 
St. Jude’s in Wilkietown — ” 

‘‘You are going to be married?” 

“lam.” 

“And not to Koroona’s mother?” 

White broke into a furious volley of execration. 

“What do you take me for? Do you think I’d disgrace myself by 
marrying a woman who is one third a black lubra?” 

“ She’s a jolly sight too good for you. She hasn’t a vice more than 
any honest white woman, except humility.” 

“ That’s neither here nor there. I’ve got an income of five thousand 
pounds a year.” 

“ Let me tell you, White, that to have five thousand pounds a year 
isn’t the whole art of being a decent human being.” 

“ Now, gently, old man — gently ; I’d put up with more from you than 
any one else in the district, for you’ve done me many a good turn. But 
I’m going to marry a lady — you needn’t screw up your nose like a colt 
in a halter for the first time — a devilish good-looking woman, too, and a 
sensible one at that. She’s been married twice — the first time to a 
Church of England parson, the last time to a doctor.” 

“ Do you mean Mrs. Minkerton at Wilkietown ?” said Murray, in an 
amazed voice. 

“I do ; and though she’s been married twice, I’m the only love of her 
life ; think of that, old chappie ! — the only love of her life,” repeated 
White with a gratified chuckle. 

“ Does she know — ” 

“Yes, I knew every one in the district knows, and so I confessed to 
her. It was just like a bit out of the yellow-backs. ‘ Lizzie,’ said I, ‘ I 


THE SILENT SEA 


53 


ain’t good enough for you. I haven’t been quite as bad as most old 
bachelors; I’ve acted too much on the square.’ By Jove! she forgave 
me before I half finished. I tell you what, Murray, a good expression 
in the eyes, and five thousand pounds a year, go a good way with a 
woman of sense.” 

Murray gave a disdainful grunt, and made a movement as if to turn 
away. White, as if not seeing this, went on, 

‘‘ But, of course, she was jealous ; she told me so plainly — ha, ha 1 
We’d be ashamed to confess that, you and I, Murray ; but it’s a quality 
in a woman — by Jove it is ! However, she consented that I should keep 
Koroona. Well, two nights ago I told Jeanie. She stared at me a bit, 
but she took it very quiet.” 

“ Yes, she’s had a good training in the way of taking things quiet,” 
observed Murray. 

‘‘ Well, yes,” responded White, who seemed to take the remark as a 
compliment ; “ whatever sort of woman I have in the house, whether 
black or half-caste or white, I mean always to be the master. I gave 
Jeanie forty pounds in an envelope and told her to be ready to start 
early in the morning, and that she had better say nothing to Koroona. 
She seemed to be a bit dazed, you know. Still, I thought she understood. 
But next morning they had both cleared.” 

“ And I suppose you think, if they had come here, I would give them 
both up to you ?” said Murray slowly. 

“ And wouldn’t you ?” 

“ No, by the Lord, I would not, as long as I had the use of my fists or 
a stock-whip 1” cried Murray, with sudden savageness. 

“ You’d find yourself in the wrong box, though, if you tried to keep 
another man’s property,” retorted White, in rising tones. 

Property ? Allow me, as a justice of the peace, to tell you that you 
dare not take that girl from her mother.” 

Before White could make any reply to this, he caught sight of Ken- 
neth Campbell coming round the wool-shed. 

“ I can’t stand that lunatic at any price,” he said hastily, and, mount- 
ing his horse, he rode oS at a gallop. He was not the only man of irreg- 
ular life in the district who was apt to give Kenneth a wide berth. Prob- 
ably this is as near as most preachers of righteousness get to changing 
the lives of their erring fellow-creatures. But it was not a mode that 
met Campbell’s aspirations to do good. 

“ Ah 1 I wish you had detained yon poor, poor creature, Mr. Murray, 
till I delivered the message laid upon me to speak to him,” he said, look- 
ing after the fiying horseman. 

‘‘ He isn’t worth your powder and shot, Kenneth,” answered Murray. 

The two men, who had become fast friends during the years that 


54 


THE SILENT SEA 


Campbell had been a shepherd on the run, talked together for some time. 
Then Kenneth went to see Mrs. Lindsay, as the sun was setting. He 
found her in the drawing-room, on a couch near one of the French win- 
dows which opened into the garden. A massive jewel-case was open on 
a table near her, at which Doris was seated, turning over the contents 
with Mrs. Challoner. 

“Maman, why didn’t you tell me before this you had a valley of dia- 
monds in the bottom drawer of your wardrobe?” said Doris, holding up 
a diamond bracelet to the light — one of a set of very costly jewels. 

“ I had almost forgotten, dearie, I had these things ; most of them be- 
longed to your grandmothers,” answered Mrs. Lindsay. Then she turned 
to speak to Kenneth, asking him about his journeys, and what he had 
been doing since she saw him last. There was a great sympathy between 
the two, and often when his voluntary labors seemed to him a vain and 
profitless thing, Kenneth found consolation and fresh encouragement in 
Mrs. Lindsay’s words. 

“ Kenneth, you look very sad and worn,” she said, after talking to him 
for a little time. 

“Oh, it is well with me, dear lady — it is well with me,” answered 
Kenneth. “ I do not expect my earthly pilgrimage to be a long one.” 
He avoided all mention of the special matter which was just then weigh- 
ing on his mind. 

“Oh, what a perfectly beautiful ruby ! Look, when I hold it up, ma- 
man, how it seems to have a little crimson lamp in its heart !” said 
Doris, turning to her mother. Then seeing she was absorbed with her 
old friend, she did not again interrupt their talk. But Mrs. Challoner 
was ready with murmurs of admiration for every kind of gem and fash- 
ion of setting. And so for some time the two currents of talk went on 
near each other — the one full of artless enjoyment in the beauty and 
flawlessness of precious stones; the other grave and solemn, yet pene- 
trated with serene hopefulness. 

As the twilight deepened, Shung stole in noiselessly to light the can- 
dles. But the light that came in through the open doors and windows 
was so soft and peaceful that Mrs. Lindsay would not have it changed. 
A few minutes after Shung went out, Doris, whose sight and hearing 
were preternatural ly quick, looked out into the garden with a startled air. 

“ No, it isn’t Spot. I see he is lying on the veranda. But don’t you 
hear a rustling sound ? See, Spot has noticed it now.” 

Doris rose as she spoke to look out ; but before she reached the open 
window, one came rushing in from the darkening garden — a young girl 
with torn clothes, with blood on her hands and face, bareheaded, with 
her dusky hair blown about her shoulders. On seeing Doris she gave a 
shrill cry* 


THE SILENT SEA 


55 


“ Oh, save me, save me ! do not let them catch me !” she cried ; and 
with that she rushed in through the window — rushed in and sank down, 
half kneeling, half crouching, at Mrs. Lindsay’s feet. “ You will not let 
them come after me — oh, you will not, I know ! I know — every one says 
you are an angel of goodness ! And my mother is dead out there where 
we were hiding in the woods.” 

Mrs. Lindsay, white to the lips, and trembling violently, attempted to 
rise, holding out her hands protectingly, while her lips moved as if in 
speech, but no sound came from them. The next moment she had fallen 
back on the couch, blood pouring from her lips. Doris was the first to 
see this, and her sudden cry of anguish, ‘‘ Mother ! mother ! mother !” 
drew the eyes of the rest from the strange apparition of the girl — young 
and slender, with scarcely a trace of the mixture of races in her veins, 
who had thus suddenly flown out of the woods, crying for protection in 
her forlorn state. Mrs. Lindsay became unconscious, and was inanimate 
so long that they almost gave up all hope she could ever revive. During 
this time of terrible suspense, when all the remedies they tried proved 
unavailing, and they awaited the arrival of the doctor from Buda, expect- 
ing only that he would confirm their worst fears, Doris did not stir from 
her mother’s side. Mrs. Murray took away the poor fugitive girl, whose 
frantic grief at sight of the mischief, which she thought was entirely due 
to her action, added to the distress of all. It was Mr. Murray who went 
for the doctor, driving a buggy and pair, so that no time should be lost 
if he were at home. As Dr. Haining depended chiefly on his practice 
among the squatters of the district, he was often absent from Buda, or, if 
after a long journey, his horses were so jaded that to undertake another 
with them was frequently attended with undue delay. Nor, if the truth 
must be told, was Dr. Haining’s skill of the kind which is of the first 
consequence in any intricate or subtle malady. But it was a relief to 
Murray to find him at home, and he almost laid violent hands on the 
worthy old man to hasten his journey to Ouranie. 

They reached it at nine o’clock at night, to find that half an hour pre- 
viously Mrs. Lindsay had shown symptoms of returning life. There was 
a faint sigh, a flutter of the eyelids, and a little afterwards she looked at 
Doris with a smile so faint as to be almost imperceptible. But Doris saw 
it, and for the first time two or three little hot tears came to her relief. 
The girl’s moral courage and presence of mind were a revelation to all. 
The doctor did everything that was in his power, but he knew at once 
that there was little hope of recovery. He stayed at Ouranie for three 
days. Late in the afternoon of the third an urgent summons came for 
him to Noomoolloo. White, who had come to see Koroona at Murray’s 
house, vainly trying to induce her to return home, and assuring her that 
her mother had been buried as expensively as any white woman, had 


56 


THE SILENT SEA 


gone away in a state of considerable excitement. After getting home he 
was very badly bitten by a large mastiff he was beating in a savage man- 
ner, for some real or imaginary act of disobedience. 

As Dr. Haining was going away, he stood for a little time talking to 
Mrs. Challoner in the hall. Mrs. Lindsay had not been removed from 
the drawing-room, and Doris was just then sitting by the bed, which 
had, under her directions, been placed opposite the window that com- 
manded her mother’s favorite outlook — across the shadowy, flower-filled 
garden and the glancing expanse of Gauwari. 

Put it round at this side, so that mother can look out when she is 
getting better,” she had said, in a low whisper, when they were arranging 
the bed. Mrs. Challoner and the doctor exchanged glances, but they 
said nothing ; and Shung, who was engaged in arranging the bed, carried 
out this direction, and clung to the reason with pathetic insistence. 
“ When Missy Lindsay bettel ” was a phrase poor Shung was never 
tired of using in the days that followed. And, as a matter of fact, dur- 
ing these three days Mrs. Lindsay had recovered speech and full con- 
sciousness. It was true, she was extremely weak. Yet though the 
blood-vessel she had broken was but a small one, the action of the heart, 
which had been seriously affected for many years, was so defective that 
from time to time she had great difficulty in breathing ; but when these 
paroxysms were over, her face was stamped with an expression of rapt 
and absolute peace, and often, when she murmured a few words of 
meditative prayer, a smile that spoke of joyous expectation would flit 
over her face. 

When Dr. Haining was leaving her, he said something about return- 
ing soon again. 

‘‘ Do not fatigue yourself for me, doctor,” she answered softly. I 
have everything that I can want, and so many anxious to wait on me, 
especially this dear child of mine.” As she spoke she stroked Doris’s 
hand lightly. 

As the doctor was going out, Shung glided in with his young mis- 
tress’s hat and gloves. 

Missy Dolis in all day,” he said, shaking his head gravely, 

“ Go, darling, out into the fresh air for a short time,” said Mrs. Lind- 
say. “ I feel a little stronger just now, and I want to speak to you 
when you return. Tell Kenneth I should like to see him for a few 
moments.” 

Doris felt a strange oppression falling on her at these words. Her 
beautiful eyes, so full of love and softness, expanded with a startled ex- 
pression ; but there was also a look of intrepid courage on her face — 
the courage and devotion of a great love, capable of rising above all 
thoughts of self. Only during the time in which her mother had lain 


THE SILENT SEA 


57 


like one dead had Doris believed that her attack was fatal ; and after 
the first overwhelming sensation of entire loneliness, of helpless, de- 
spairing isolation, as of a creature suddenly taken from under the meas- 
ureless vault of heaven filled with warm blue air, and thrust in a dark 
corner, between cruel bars, an inexplicable composure came to her — a 
strong, unreasoning conviction that she would not long survive her 
mother. Was it some undeveloped malady that lurked in her system, 
or some strong obscure link between her own life and her mother’s, 
which lent such force to the thought, devoid of all fear and without a 
touch of morbid self-pity? 

But these thoughts and emotions vanished as quickly as they had 
come when her mother recovered consciousness. From that moment 
Doris’s mind was centred on one object — to be well and strong, so as to 
be with her mother during the day when she was most awake. Each 
night she had gone to sleep quite early, sleeping the profound sleep of a 
child and rising early in the morning, radiant and refreshed, coming into 
her mother’s room with the first sun-rays with a great bowl of freshly 
gathered roses. Oh, how the gentle happiness of her mother’s smile as 
their eyes met suffused the girl’s whole nature with an ecstasy of grati- 
tude, with an indefinable supreme sense of union, which nothing could 
rupture ! That look of conscious, deep serenity on her mother’s face 
was to Doris a covenant and an assurance that all was well, and must 
continue so. 

But on the previous day, after recovering from a swooning feebleness 
which had lasted longer than usual, Doris had noticed her mother’s eyes 
resting on her from time to time with something of solicitude — of anx- 
iety. She had remained for a long time motionless, her hands clasped, 
her lips moving from time to time, till she fell asleep. After an hour 
she had awoke, a new radiance on her brow and in her eyes. Something 
of the same look was on her face now, and yet her words woke a vague 
apprehension in Doris’s mind. She lingered wistfully over her mother, 
with those tender and skilful little touches which impart to pillows a 
new quality of being at once softer and more supporting. 

“ Bring me a fresh story, Doris, about a new honey-bird or a fresh 
fiower bursting into blossom,” she whispered, as Doris kissed her 
hands. 

The girl’s eyes were suddenly dimmed as she went out. She opened 
the door noiselessly that led into the hall. The doctor, with his back 
towards her, was talking to Mrs. Challoner. 

You see, it isn’t one thing ; it is a complication. She cannot re- 
cover. I don’t expect that she can live more than a few days at the 
utmost — ” 

Warned by a sudden pressure on his arm, and a low Sh ! sh !” from 


58 


THE SILENT SEA 


Mrs. Cballoner, Dr. Haining stopped abruptly. He would like to have 
retracted his words, or to have offered some modifying explanation, 
when he saw that Doris had overheard him ; but her steadfast gaze dis- 
concerted him. 

“ Were you talking of mother, doctor ?” she said, in a very low 
voice. 

Oh, my poor dear child !” said Mrs. Challoner, putting her arms 
round her as if to ward off this great sorrow. 

Doris slipped away without further speech. 

‘‘ That child has wonderful pluck,” said the doctor, looking after 
her. 

But Mrs. Challoner shook her head. 

I would sooner see her cry, and show more distress,” she said. 

She hasn’t been a single day or night away from her mother in her 
life. I don’t know how she is to live without her.” 


CHAPTER VHI. 

On going out, Doris saw Kenneth Campbell reading in the garden, 
and went to give him her mother’s message. Then she went on to the 
rustic bench, near the violet-banks, and for some time the thought of 
that incredible separation which seemed to be drawing near bewildered 
and overwhelmed her. When she left the garden the sun had already 
set ; but the air was so clear and transparent that for some time the 
light, instead of fading, mellowed and deepened, with reddish glows 
from the western horizon falling upon the trunks of the trees, and then 
gradually stealing upward to the topmost branches. Doris mechani- 
cally followed her mother’s favorite walk round the margin of the lake. 

‘‘ She cannot recover.” The words kept weaving themselves into 
every bird-note she heard, till gradually, as the twilight fell, the birds 
became silent. The honey-eaters were the first to go to sleep ; after 
that the tren^ulous calls of the shell-parrots died away ; later the chirp- 
ing of the sparrows ceased, then the swallows’ last twittering. As the 
reflections of the trees in the water were merged in a confused mass, the 
fairy carillons of the blue wrens were hushed ; but the trills of the reed- 
warblers among the tall sedges still went on, while the slender brown 
reeds, and the dense clumps of ti-tree at the far end of Gauwari, began 
to be haunted by the long-drawn, plaintive calls of the curlews — one in 
the far distance answering the others with a measured cadence that 
seemed to embody the very spirit of the waning conflict of two lights. 


THE SILENT SEA 


59 


In that calm, brooding hour, when the dimness of night is still in sus- 
pense, while the light of day is neutralized by the tranquil twilight 
shadows — when even the steadfast trees that we know most intimately 
assume a half-mysterious air as of beings from another sphere — in such 
an atmosphere the heart is often lightened of its most importunate 
fears. It is as though the mind became involuntarily conscious of the 
eternities to come, immutably sealed with a peace which the darts of 
fate we now so much dread are powerless to assail. Doris’s companion- 
ship with nature had been too penetrating to leave her in this hour of 
deepest apprehension. She had been too long and too deeply moved by 
the sacred, silent influences around her to stand in their presence coldly 
wrapped in her own sorrow. Her tears ceased as she looked around, 
suddenly pierced with the thought that earth and sky breathed the self- 
same peace which was imprinted on her mother’s face. . . . Was that 
beloved mother indeed to pass into the unknown realms which our Father 
keeps for His children infinitely beyond the reach of earth’s light and 
darkness ? Looking up into the far silent spaces of the sky, which was 
so immensely vaulted that it was as though the immeasurable heavens 
had broken asunder to the highest, a great strength of love nerved her 
afresh. She would not mar the beautiful serenity of her darling’s home- 
going by futile tears and repinings. Sorrow she must have, but she 
would endure it bravely and alone. 

She returned to the house to find her mother half sitting up and 
talking to Mrs. Challoner, without any distress of breathing. 

“ Mother, you are a little better,” she said, her heart almost ceasing 
to beat with the sudden shock of joy. 

“ Yes, dear ; I am well enough to talk to you for a little. We 
won’t have the lights in ; let us sit in the twilight . . . like old 
times.” 

Mrs. Challoner left the two alone. 

There was silence for a little time, broken only by the notes of a 
fan tail in the garden, who sang as if his small heart was too full of joy 
to go to sleep at his accustomed hour. 

“ I thought they had all gone to sleep but the little reed-warblers and 
the curlews, mother,” said Doris softly ; and the sound of her voice, 
speaking steadily, gave the mother courage for her task. 

“ We have been very happy together, my child . . . and now I fear 
you will grieve — ” 

Do not be afraid for me, mother,” said the girl steadily. 

My dear one . . . you are going to be brave for me and for your- 
self. It is strange how much we forget that it is only what we do not 
see which is eternal — that all around us is a passing dream from which 
our Father one day in His love awakes us.” 


60 


THE SILENT SEA 


You are going away from me, maman — away to the other home,’’ 
said Doris, with a little catch in her throat. 

“Yes, dearest . . . after you went out I grew heavy with care at the 
thought of leaving you. ... I feared for you in your grief and lone- 
liness. . . . But as I looked after you I saw how our Father had put 
His own seal on the whole world around you, and T felt somehow sure 
that He would touch your heart also with the peace which passeth 
understanding — ” 

“ Oh, mother, was that why I could not cry any longer ?” said Doris, 
in a low, awe-stricken voice. 

The mother’s face was radiant. Her heart was full as she pondered 
over those mysteries of the soul and miracles of nature, for which our 
most ardent words of explanation are clouds of enshrouding darkness. 

“ It will be well with the child.” 

She repeated the words over more than once with a rapt look in her 
face. Her strength kept up wonderfully for some time longer. For 
nearly an hour she went over many matters in detail with Doris regard- 
ing her future life — Mme. de Serziac and her guardian, and the disposal 
of certain sums of money, and her wish that, if Doris and Mr. Graham 
should at any time decide to sell Ouranie, Mr. Murray should have the 
first offer on as easy terms as possible. 

“ I think that is almost all the business we need talk, Doris,” she 
said at the close ; “ but there is one thing I should like you to decide 
for yourself, whether, after we must part, you prefer to stay here till the 
Challoners are ready to take you to Mme. de Serziac, or go on with Mrs. 
Challoner to Colmar ? You would have your own rooms, of course, 
with Shung to attend on you and your horses to drive and ride.” 

Mrs. Lindsay spoke a little hurriedly, fearing that this ruthless neces- 
sity for realizing so closely the last strange farewell might press too 
heavily on Doris. 

“ I don’t think I could bear to be here without you, mother,” an- 
swered Doris in a very low voice, as she stroked her mother’s hand in 
the old, loving fashion. Then she stooped down and kissed it repeatedly 
and passionately. 

“ Oh, mother, do you remember long ago, when I had fever and 
used to dream so often you had gone away to the East — to the Silent 
Sea?” she said, her tears now falling in the dusk as fast as summer 
rain. 

“ Yes, Doris, I remember. And then you thought you had gone after 
me, and found me ; and for days, till the fever left you, you thought 
that was where we were. I am going on a longer journey ; but by-and- 
by, my child, when your work is done, you will come too.” 

“ Oh, maman ! maman ! if I could only come with you now !” 


THE SILENT SEA 


61 


Then the mother spoke without tears or faltering of all she could do, 
of all the duties that awaited her. 

“ When your loneliness presses hard on you, Doris, remember that I 
wished you to work for others — that I wished you to have your share 
of all the duties and sweetness of life.” 

“ But, mother, if I am lonely all the time and want to come to you 
with all my heart, promise me you will not be vexed if I pray to our 
Father to take me to yon.” 

‘‘ No, darling, I shall not be vexed,” answered the mother, softly. She 
had faith in the power of time to heal sorrow. 

Then for a little space in the gathering darkness Doris did not try to 
check her tears. So much she yielded to the cravings of the love that 
filled the heart and had ever been the centre of her life. But after that 
evening she regained composure, and even cheerfulness. Henceforward 
to the last hour of her mother’s life these did not desert her. 

Early in the morning, four days after this, as Doris stood drawing 
back the window-curtains, she caught her mother’s eyes fixed on her in 
a long, loving, untroubled look. An unusual pallor in the dear face 
made her hasten to the bedside. Half an hour later Shung-Loo glided 
in, bearing a tray with some little delicacy to tempt an invalid’s appe- 
tite. Mrs. Challoner was then in the room, her face bathed in tears. 
But Doris met him and put the tray down, looking at him strangely, 
saying, 

‘‘ Oh, Shung, Shung, we cannot do anything for maraan any more !” 

She was dry-eyed, but the deep thrill of anguish in her voice made 
Shung’s pale-hued almond eyes very dim. Hitherto no crisis had arisen 
in the girl’s life in which Shung was unable to suggest some consola- 
tion, but he had too much of the philosophy of life to attempt any 
now. 

Nothing in the room spoke of death or sorrow. Through the wide- 
open windows the clambering roses hung in dewy clusters, white and 
mauve butterflies hovering over them in the clear, early sunlight. There 
were bowls of roses on the mantel-piece ; even on the little table close 
to the bedside lay a great heap of blush-roses, heliotrope, white lilac, and 
a bunch of violets. “ Bring me some of our favorite flowers out of the 
garden, Doris,” the mother had whispered less than an hour ago. After 
bringing these in Doris had drawn the curtains back from the open win- 
dows. And here now were the dewy flowers, giving out their penetrat- 
ing fragrance, the hum of bees with their tireless industry in the garden, 
and over all the warm, liberal sunshine. And in the midst, after days 
of absorbed watching, of wakeful nights, of serene dawns, in which the 
loving spirit seemed endued with fresh vitality, had come the moment 
of bitter severance. 


62 


THE SILENT SEA 


For the first strange da3^s, loneliness and sorrow, all thoughts of her- 
self, were partially lost for Doris in an overwhelming wonder, and a 
yearning stronger than the instinct of life, to penetrate the inexorable 
veil which, in one supreme moment, had been drawn between her moth- 
er’s life and her own. That beloved mother, that gentle, self-forgetting, 
heroic soul, to the last full of thought and memory, and tender respon- 
siveness to the lightest whisper of love ! And then in one moment she 
had passed beyond all intercourse and all knowledge ! 

“ Oh, maraan ! maman ! can I never know anything more of you as 
long as I live?” Doris would say over and over again, regardless of 
everything around her in that one engrossing thought. The waves were 
breaking upon the rocks afar, where she could neither hear nor see 
them ; ships were sailing across the seas to strange lands ; pictures that 
had been painted hundreds of years before were hanging in closed cham- 
bers ; choirs of singers separated by the whole length of the world sang 
the same hymns in churches and cathedrals. All these, and innumera- 
ble sights and sounds, though hidden and unheard, could be verified ; 
but was there no possibility of reaching the lives that had passed be- 
yond our ken ? How far beyond the light of the moon and the wealth 
of the mid-day’s sunshine and the orbit of the planets was that unknown 
universe of the spirit-world ? Or was it near, though unseen and un- 
known ? These and kindred thoughts filled Doris’s mind in place of 
the sunbright fancies of her untroubled girlhood. Her loss was one of 
those events which effect a sudden change in one’s conception of things 
and events. 

The first sight of the sea, to a boy who has Viking blood in his veins, 
brings hitherto unknown emotions into play. There are vibrations in 
the waves which awaken memories that have no part in his personal rec- 
ollections. And so all through our strange pathetic dramas, dim remi- 
niscent pictures, transmitted by generations who have threaded their way 
through the short joys and the long tragedies of life, seem suddenly in- 
corporated in individual experience, maturing the heart and mind when 
one of the great touchstones of experience is reached. Then the innu- 
merable sources from which knowledge of life is consciousl}^ and uncon- 
sciously drawn seem in one short day to give up their messages. The 
events that were at the time hardly noticed, the news that was heard 
with wonder and straightway forgotten, the broken scraps of conversa- 
tion that awoke a vague mistrust, the slow accumulations of perception 
and dawning instincts — all are suddenly illuminated with this vital event 
that lays its seal on the world and redeems it henceforth from the hazi- 
ness of a dream and the misty disproportion of an uncomprehended 
mass of details. 

In the first days of loneliness, of separation that seemed too strange 


THE SILENT SEA 


63 


to be real, Doris would take up one of her mother’s best-loved books, 
and in turning over the leaves with tender reverence, she would see a 
passage marked that seemed to hold the whole history of her own loss 
in lines that long years before had told the story of her mother’s be- 
reavement : 

“Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, 

One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 
That ever looked with human eyes.” 

The strange story of human life, beginning in the mists of childhood, 
passing beyond an inscrutable veil, repeated over and over from age to 
age, would at times hold her spell-bound ; and in the face of the univer- 
sal history of humanity, her own sorrow seemed to fall into a sober and 
ordered proportion. The restraint that thought and a wider range of 
vision put upon all passions saved her from any morbid feeling of 
revolt. 

“ If I cry, it is for myself, not for you, darling maman,” she would 
say softly under her breath ; and the mist of tears would be stayed by a 
presentment of her mother’s face. The large serene eyes, the delicately 
moulded features, the sweet, quiet mouth, with its wistful little smile, 
would rise up so vividly before her, that grief would suddenly be checked 
by a feeling of incongruity. 

“What is our life but a little span — even the longest?” Kenneth 
would say, lingering, during these first days, to give such stay and con- 
solation as were in his power. “ A little fever in the town, or thirst in 
the desert, or a storm in mid-ocean — what are they but the messengers 
that are sent to summon us from this vale of tears.” 

“Ah, but, Kenneth, it is a very beautiful world . . . and now, although 
maman is gone, all these long years we were together — oh, how beauti- 
ful they were !” answered Doris, shrinking instinctively from that au- 
stere contempt of the earth and all its belongings which so often marked 
the old shepherd’s utterances. “ Listen to this that maman taught me 
to sing when I was quite little, Kenneth,” she said, opening the piano, 
and striking a few chords ; and then she sang, in a sweet, low voice that 
gathered gladness as she sang : 

“ Plantons le mai, chantons le mai, 

Le mai du joli mois de mai; 

Et puis chantons quand on plante, 

Et puis plantons quand on chante. 

Le mai, le mai, 

Qui nous rend le coeur gai!” 

“ Ah, yes. Miss Doris ; yes, that is true. There is joy even in this life 
for the hearts that are possessed by perfect peace.” Then in a lower 


64 


THE SILENT SEA 


voice he said, as he looked at the girl’s rapt face : Out of the mouths 
of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.” 

“ I know that for some the world must be a terrible place,” said 
Doris, turning from the open piano, and looking into her old friend’s 
face with serious, wide-opened eyes. Often I think of poor Koroona, 
who had to run away with her dying mother, even out of her father’s 
house.” 

In the midst of her sorrow this story had fastened on Doris with a 
new power of interpretation. The thought of so much fear and misery, 
of familiarity with trouble bitterer than the pangs of death, made her 
look back on her own secure and happy childhood with a new power of 
observation. Her memory was stored with wide, spacious chambers full 
of light and grace and protecting love. What an endless store of days, 
steeped in tangible beauty, rose before her as she went from one familiar 
spot to the other, trying to say farewell, yet vaguely feeling that they 
would be with her when she went away as much as when she was in 
their midst ! She could not have put the feeling into words, but it was 
in her heart, that the deepest reality of life had somehow gone from her, 
and that now the world and all it contained was a little uncertain and 
unfamiliar, as if seen through some softening medium like that of sleep, 
in which we see and hear and touch, and yet are all the time remote 
from the objects of sense. 

Yet hour by hour she was attending with scrupulous care to details 
that devolved on her before leaving Ouranie with Mrs. Challoner. An 
old friend of her mother’s in town, one with whom she had become ac- 
quainted on her first voyage to Australia, and to whom Mrs. Lindsay 
had left a small annuity for life, wrote to Doris, pressing her to come 
and stay in Adelaide till her friends, the Challoners, were able to take 
her to Mme. de Serziac. 

“ Perhaps you would like it better, dear. I am afraid the Salt-bush 
country will seem terribly bare and dry to you,” said Mrs. Challoner 
wistfully, after this letter had come. 

No, dear Mrs. Lucy, don’t send me away. I know you better than 
any one else now. It does not matter so much about the country. . . . 
You know it is the Silent Sea that maman and I talked about so often,” 
answered Doris. 

The next day the drawing-room was to be dismantled, but Doris beg- 
ged to have it left just one day more as it used to be, and for one day 
more it was undisturbed, filled with a dreamy wealth of fiowers as in 
the old days ; the windows wide open, overlooking the garden filled with 
all September’s overflowing abundance of bloom and perfume ; the lake 
beyond, reflecting in its clear depths a few filmy clouds faintly white 
and vaporous, as foam tossed from the crest of waves. Everywhere 


THE SILENT SEA 65 

there were the cries and calls of birds who had come back to their old 
nests or were building new ones. 

The twilight deepened, warm and fragrant, like a beautiful reverie be- 
tween day and night, and Doris stood for the last time in the old famil- 
iar room, going from one spot to the other, looking at the books and 
pictures in the fading light ; at the cabinet, with its relics of the aborig- 
inal race — shell -spoons, a chisel of volcanic glass, necklaces made of 
small reeds and the stems of coarse grass cut into lengths and threaded, 
a netted bag made from the stems of cotton-bush and rushes, a message- 
stick, with close and involved carving — a summons that had once passed 
from one tribe to the other as a signal of peace or war. From these 
memorials of a vanished race Doris went, and stood looking for some 
moments at a water-color painting, in the foreground of which stood a 
dwelling that had been for many generations in her mother’s family. 
It was a calm English landscape, with wide, shadowy trees ; a little 
white village in the distance, with a slender church-spire rising from the 
midst ; a blue-gray sky overhead, with a few red clouds trooping into 
the west, while under foot emerald-green meadows, starred with butter- 
cups and daisies, completed a picture full of Old-World repose and soft, 
cool tones. Often after days of intense heat, in which the very atmos- 
phere at Ouranie seemed to be on fire and burn with viewless flame, 
Doris had watched her mother turn to this picture with a weary longing. 

‘‘Ah, darling mother,” she said in a wistful whisper, “you were often 
very tired ; but now all that is over, and, if I grow very tired, I will 
come to you.” 

Three days later Doris was in the heart of the barren landscape of the 
Salt-bush country, where low desert ridges with rocky outcrops, and vast 
flat spaces of sad, gray, creeping bushes, were outlined against a bound- 
less sky of deep, shadowless blue. It was a land so harsh and forbid- 
ding, so devoid of all charm, that it seemed as if no tradition of human 
interest could cling around its vague formless regions. But as the light 
of the first day faded, and stars began to glimmer in the clear topaz of 
the upper sky, Doris, looking westward, saw the long, aerial line of the 
Euckalowie Ranges in the far, far distance, like a silvery silhouette in 
the midst of the faint vapor that at times creeps over these immense 
plains after sunset. The prospect restored to her the old picture of the 
Silent Sea, and, like a home melody heard far from home, it brought 
her nearer to the days whose memory now formed the core of her life. 

5 


66 


THE SILENT SEA 


CHAPTER IX. 

As might be expected in an arrangement that had so many elements 
of inequality and uncertainty, Miss Paget gradually found that the 
understanding which existed between herself and Victor Fitz-Gibbon 
was beset with uneasiness. Her father had a sort of constitutional aver- 
sion to young men, due, doubtless, to the long years in which he con- 
sidered his talents had been wasted in abortive efforts to sharpen wits 
that, in most cases, it had pleased Providence to make very dull. 

“ My dear, don’t you think that young man is rather more frivolous 
even than the average ?” he said one evening after Victor had gone away, 
having “ dropped in ” for an hour’s chat by prearrangement with Helen. 

Miss Paget flushed, and a hasty answer rose to her tongue, for even a 
dispassionate critic might consider the judgment unfair. Though it 
was true that Victor was not deeply learned in any sciences, yet he had 
a quick and active intelligence, was well-read for his years, and had an 
easy fluency of expression, which sometimes bordered on eloquence when 
his imagination was touched. On second thoughts Miss Paget smothered 
her resentment, and answered lightly, 

^‘Xo, papa; I don’t think so. I cannot even guess why you come to 
that conclusion.” 

“ He smiles far too readily. What was there in the latest method of 
disintegrating nebulae to amuse one?” 

“ I assure you, papa, he was not disrespectful to the nebulae,” an- 
swered Miss Paget, smiling as she recalled the little joke that had passed 
in an undertone between herself and Victor while her father read one of 
his “notes” on those glowing masses of incandescent hydrogen which 
look like mere stains of light in the sky. They ought not, perhaps, to 
have exchanged any words; but it is hard to be kept among the stu- 
pendous mysteries of the solar system while so many little earthly trifles 
have an enchanting interest of their own. 

The next time Victor paid an evening call he found Mrs. Tillotson in 
possession of Helen. The lady lived near enough to Lancaster House 
to indulge in those promiscuous and unceremonious calls which are the 
growth of a long-standing intimacy. If Mrs. Tillotson’s favorite shares 
went up with a bound or had an alarming downward tendency, if she 
had an invitation to Government House and felt uncertain which would 
be the most appropriate dress, if a mutual friend was very ill, if her 


THE SILENT SEA 


67 


dressmaker had made an unconscionable overcharge — in a word, if there 
was any news or no news at all to talk over, Mrs. Tillotson, when she 
was disengaged for the evening and knew that Miss Paget was at home, 
would drop in with her favorite maid, who had a long-standing friend- 
ship with the Paget servants ; and mistress and maid would both have a 
cosey chat that often lengthened into an hour or two. 

On this occasion Mrs. Tillotson had come to consult her friend on an 
important point. Her only sister, married to a delicate clergyman, had 
thoughts of accompanying her husband on a trip to Italy. The congrega- 
tion were going to pay his expenses ; but as to his wife and two daugh- 
ters, if they went, it could only be by the help of some of their w’ealthier 
relations. 

“ Now, my dear, do you think that my means would justify me in 
presenting them with a check for five hundred pounds?” said Mrs. Til- 
lotson solemnly. 

As a matter of fact, her means would have enabled her to do so twice 
over without any sensible diminution of her daily comforts. But though 
Mrs. Tillotson was a w'oman of innumerable verbal enthusiasms, life was 
destitute of motives to make her part with money readily. 

I should like to do it for the sake of Blanche, my eldest niece. She 
has a real talent for drawing. My dear, you would be surprised to see 
some of her later work, so full of soul, and very little touched up by 
Mr. Trim. He is a most capable young man, and has a wonderful eye 
for genius, and such a sense of humor. Every pupil taught by any one 
else amuses him so much. He puts them back invariably, but then he 
brings them on most rapidly again. He is delighted with Blanche’s last 
design for a pair of bellows ; and, of course, the Old Masters and so on 
would be of immense advantage to her. And, do you know, my dear, 
there’s another thing — ” 

Mrs. Tillotson dropped her voice mysteriously, and drew her chair a 
little nearer to Miss Paget, who was listening with a small portion of 
her mind, while the rest was occupied with conjectures as to whether 
Victor would come soon, and, if so, whether Mrs. Tillotson would ex- 
press her delight at his having a friend like Miss Paget, who was like a 
second mother to him ! 

Of course, one doesn’t like to be a matchmaker ; but still, the other 
evening at Maria’s, when they were having a musical evening, I thought 
Victor Fitz-Gibbon was a good deal impressed by Blanche’s singing. 
Of course, it is early yet to begin to think of his marrying.” 

“ Oh, not at all, Mrs. Tillotson,” answered Miss Paget, with a bright 
smile. The thought of the numerous young ladies with whom Victor 
would come into friendly contact did not invariably amuse her, but in 
this case she felt that she could afford to be generous. “ You see, it is 


68 


THE SILENT SEA 


simply a question of means. Nearly all the crown princes of Europe 
marry at twenty*one or twenty-two.” 

Well, my dear, he would be just twenty-two when they returned; 
for, if they all go, they won’t leave till after Christmas. And, you 
know, a girl coming back after a year’s absence — ” 

Mrs. Tiliotson’s confidences were interrupted by Victor’s entrance. 
She gave a flurried, conscious glance at Helen, and then, with the tact 
that was her prerogative, she exclaimed, 

“ Talk of an angel, and you’ll hear the rustling of his wings ! Do 
you know, my dear Victor, Miss Paget was just saying that, as you 
have ample means, you would most likely marry, like the crown princes 
of Europe, at twenty-one or twenty-two.” 

“ Keally ? Then I hope Miss Paget will be at my wedding, if I am to 
be ranked with such fortunate individuals,” said Victor lightly. 

But Miss Paget, who was learning every nuance of his tones and ex- 
pressions by heart, felt that there was an inflection of annoyance in his 
voice — felt sure, too, that Mrs. Tillotson’s half-embarrassed, half-con- 
scious manner would lead him to suppose that she had been taken into 
confidence as to their semi-engagement, though only on the previous 
day she had positively forbidden him to write to his mother on the mat- 
ter. Some further speeches of Mrs. Tillotson’s, marked by the same 
good sense, must have deepened this impression ; for when Miss Paget 
next met Victor, his first words were, 

“ Well, Helen, after finding your ‘ habitual Providence’ knew all about 
our affairs, I thought I might tell the dear old mater, and I did.” 

“Oh, the dreadful old woman! And she would till after you 
had gone, so that I had no opportunity of explaining to you,” said Miss 
Paget, choking a little as she spoke. She knew enough of Mrs. Fitz- 
Gibbon to feel very sure that her first and last impulse, on learning that 
her handsome boy, with his newly acquired fortune, proposed to marry 
a woman so much older than himself, would be to throw cold water on 
the project as much as lay in her power. “ Well, never mind, what 
must be must be,” she added sombrely, finding some relief in that strain 
of fatalism which, sooner or later, invades the consciousness of all who 
try to plot and plan over-much, for themselves or others. 

Victor had followed his first impulse in writing to his mother of the 
understanding between himself and Miss Paget. If Mrs. Tillotson had 
not, in a manner, driven him to this action, some one else, no doubt, 
would have done so. 

In the meantime Mrs. Tillotson began to appear in so drearily objec- 
tionable a light to Miss Paget, that she began to ask herself on what 
grounds their friendship was really founded. “ An old friend of your 
dear mother’s !” These were the words with which Mrs. Tillotson had 


THE SILENT SEA 


69 


embraced Miss Paget, but not until after she bad come into her fortune 
of three thousand a year ! An old friend of her mother ? Yes ; so was 
that Mrs. Selway, who had on .Helen’s eighteenth birthday volunteered 
to bring her out at a Government House ball in Sydney ! 

Oh, how well Miss Paget remembered every detail of that squalid 
‘‘ coming out,” which was burned into, her memory as with branding- 
irons ! They were in the depths of their poverty when the invitations 
came for this special ball to Professor and the Misses Paget. It was a 
more than ordinarily brilliant affair, because of the presence of some 
French royalties, and all Sydney was agog, as only a strictly democratic 
city seems to have the secret of being when such an affair is in the wind. 
Every one was talking of it — those who had invitations, and those who 
had none ; the tradesmen who were busier because the great ball was 
coming off, and the tradesmen who had nothing to do with it. 

It is a pity we could not sell our invitations to some of the people 
who would give their eyes to go,” said one of the elder Miss Pagets ; 
“ the price they would give would pay the servant’s wages and buy us 
new dresses all round.” 

Then Mrs. Selway had dropped in — an old, ancestral friend who some- 
how managed to live luxuriously on a narrow income. She also had an 
invitation, but no excuse for going, having just then no young relatives 
to chaperon. 

“ Couldn’t Helen go ?” she said. “ It is her eighteenth birthday, too. 
It would be like her coming out. Oh, poor dear ! she ought to have a 
chance. I’ll go with her myself rather than that she shouldn’t have the 
pleasure.” 

After a little discussion it was decided that Helen should go. There 
was a gown belonging to her eldest step-sister which, with a little altera- 
tion, was found fit and proper for the occasion. It was a white Liberty 
silk, which, after being carefully ironed, took to itself a lustre menda- 
cious enough to deceive all but the eyes of other women. At the last 
moment the fit was found a little defective, and pins were used in a great 
hurry. One of them jagged Helen’s shoulder cruelly, but she endured 
it without wincing. The other part of the performance was so infinitely 
harder to bear. She had lain awake at nights, sleepless with pleasurable 
excitement in anticipation of this joy. And it resolved itself into sit- 
ting out nearly the whole evening without partners — a pin lacerating 
her fiesh ! She longed to go away somewhere into the darkness, but 
not until she had been twice in to supper would Mrs. Selway leave the 
brilliant scene. The new governor spent more than his income in the 
discharge of his viceregal duties, and the suppers at Government House 
were then very good. 

“ Just the sort of thing Mrs. Tillotson would do,” reflected Miss Paget, 


70 


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as hazy plans floated into her mind for relaxing the intimacy between 
them, and her heart hardened with the half-vindictive feelings which 
reminiscences of the days of her penury always brought to her. But 
it is difficult to devise a working scheme for cutting an old friend who 
lives within sight of your chimneys. And, after all. Miss Paget could 
not long keep a sense of grievance at an acute pitch. Only of late it 
seemed as if one cause of uneasiness had hardly passed away before 
another arose. 

It was in the nature of things that Victor’s inheritance of a handsome 
competence should greatly enhance his social value, and that he should 
be much sought after for those amusements in which the distinctively 
youthful of both sexes play the most prominent part. Thus, at balls 
and amateur theatricals, in which he so often took a leading role^ Miss 
Paget, when present, was for the most part a mere spectator. When 
ladies at a comparatively early age begin to speak slightingly of the 
commoner forms of amusement, they are apt to be credited with a more 
enduring contempt of such pleasures than they really feel. Hostesses 
are usually mothers, and readily resign themselves to the belief that a 
young woman who is by way of being an heiress, and is still pretty and 
attractive, habitually despises dancing. An eligible bachelor, on the 
other hand, can never hope to escape their invitations unless he marries, 
or begins to attend week-night meetings of the Salvation Army. 

Victor began by being very much disappointed when he went to balls 
and parties and found Miss Paget so often missing. 

“ You ought to come, if only for my sake, you know, Helen,” he said 
two weeks after they had landed from the Mogul, The words were 
sweet in her ears, and yet she tortured herself with the question, “ How 
much does he really mind?” Victor had been at a large party at the 
house of a mutual friend on the previous evening, and had given a lively 
account of the affair. 

“ And were your partners very pretty and amiable, and nicely dressed, 
Victor?” said Miss Paget, not making any direct reply to this assertion. 

Oh, they were very jolly, most of them,” he answered. “ But in 
the midst of it all I would think now and then, ‘ If only Helen were 
here ! She is most likely alone — ’ ” 

“ Or asleep. Didn’t you think that I might be asleep, and dreaming 
I was with you at Mrs. Purdie’s ball ?” 

“ Not at eleven o’clock.” 

“ Which was the only time you remembered me ?” said Miss Paget, 
laughing. 

“ No ; the time I thought of you most. What were you doing then, 
Helen ?” 

“ Let me see. Papa stayed a little later than usual in the library, so 


THE SILENT SEA 


11 


I had the tray taken in there with his whiskey and Apollinaris, and I 
heard how the great debacles of the glacial epoch swept down the enor- 
mous debris of the moraines into the valleys, whose banks had been 
already eroded. What could be more fascinating ?” 

“ But, Helen, you must find it dull. I know it is awfully good of you 
to devote yourself to your father as you do, but, you see, you can’t do it 
always ; and couldn’t one of the maids see to the tray if you were away ?” 

But she wouldn’t care to hear about the debacles^’' replied Miss 
Paget, smiling. 

Then she asked Victor how he was getting on with his uncle in the 
warehouse. The young man’s face clouded a little, but he answered 
lightly, 

“ Oh, like a house on fire — that is, I’m the house, and uncle puts me 
out at least twenty times a day. Perhaps it’s mostly my fault, but if it 
is, I had no idea I was such a cross-grained brute. I was copying out 
an indent the other day — but there, I won’t inflict such stuff on you.” 

“But I’m interested, Victor.” 

“ And, faith. I’ll keep up your interest by not going too much into 
detail,” he answered. “ There is nothing more tiresome than relations 
who quarrel, except relations who admire each other. Uncle Stuart and 
I will never be tedious in the last way. Helen, I think I’ll be off to the 
Bush for a few months, if any decent excuse offers itself. xAfter all, 
we see very little of each other. W^hat between your ‘ habitual Provi- 
dence ’ and — by Jove, that’s her ring now !” 

It was shortly after this conversation that Miss Paget, in the half- 
careless way in which a well-bred woman can put a request without 
making it, said to one and another of her party-giving friends, 

“ Do you know, I am suffering under a revival of folly. I got quite 
fond of dancing once more on the Moguls but my friends keep on giving 
me credit for being quite beyond caring for the sound of dance-music.” 

Very soon Miss Paget had as many invitations to balls, dances, and 
even informal hops, as the youngest debutante could desire. But in a 
short time she felt convinced that it would be very doubtful policy for her 
to resume such gayeties seriously. She was constantly comparing herself 
with the youngest and lightest-hearted of the girls around her — con- 
stantly thinking how the record of her twenty-nine years, of her buried 
embittered youth, was thrown into clearer relief in her face when she 
stood near Victor, with his laughing eyes, and unlined face flushed with 
the bloom of early manhood. 

“ A dear old thing, isn’t she ? And fancy taking to balls and dances 
now, after despising them so long !” she overheard a girl say to Victor 
one evening, and she did not doubt that the words were meant for her 
ear, for Victor had been teasing her for more dances than she could give 


12 


THE SILENT SEA 


him ; and the speaker was one of those young ladies who do not scru- 
ple at times to show a marked preference for the men they consider 
most eligible. “ A dear old thing !” The words stung her, while she 
despised herself for heeding them. She noticed that for the rest of the 
evening Victor carefully avoided the girl guilty of the impertinence, and 
her heart throbbed with gratitude for his unflinching loyalty to her. But 
she knew well the more he exhibited any feeling beyond the courtesy of 
casual acquaintances, the more tongues there will be to wag in a chorus 
of wonder and scorn and incredulity. 

They met next day at a garden-party, and Victor taxed her with keep- 
ing too much out of the way. Her father stood near, speaking of some 
new astronomical discovery. Miss Paget and Victor moved a little away. 

“ For my part, I shall never believe in astronomers,” she said, “ till 
one of them demonstrates how the earth came to be the parody of a for- 
gotten planet.” 

“ A parody?” 

“ Yes, where the connecting link between people and their proper des- 
tiny is left out.” 

“ Helen, how dare yC)u be inventing melancholy on such a day as this ? 
Look at those roses, and the sea beyond the trees, and the chickens of 
the Madonna singing little hymns all the time, and me by the side of 
you. What do you want that you have not got?” said Victor, turning 
on her with laughing reproach. 

“ Youth — youth — youth !” were the words that rose to her lips with a 
passionate longing to utter them ; but instead she said, with a careless 
smile, “Oh, just a guarantee from fate that I shall always walk the stage 
bombarded with bouquets.” 

“ To the sound of melodious orchestral music ?” 

“ Yes, kept out of sight so that I may not be offended by the scraping 
of the flddle-bows. Joking aside though, I do often think that life is 
more like the skeleton of a pantomime than a play, though your poets 
are so fond of comparing the world to a stage.” 

“ My poets ! arenT you falling in love with any of them on your own 
account, Helen?” 

Miss Paget shook her head with a slight smile. Books had never 
been much to her. As for the poets, they seemed to her to be always 
attitudinizing — inventing words for imaginary raptures and for emotions 
that entered little into real life. They wrote endlessly about constancy, 
and yet they generally ended by making love to other men’s wives, though 
they seldom indulged in the practice to their own. Nature, too, was 
little to her beyond a setting which, apart from cultivation, had either 
too many trees or too few — always some quality in excess, that a little 
repelled her. 


THE SILENT SEA 


73 


CHAPTER X. 

A FEW days after the garden-party Miss Paget wrote a note to Victor, 
telling him that she had finally decided not to go out in the evenings 
henceforth except when her father went also. ‘‘I have just sent an 
excuse to the Masons,” she wrote, “ and it has occurred to me that you 
might wonder I did not turn up. I have, however, made an arrange- 
ment by which I think we can always be sure of seeing each other, at 
least, on Saturday evenings. I have engaged Mrs. Tillotson to lunch 
and spend the whole afternoon of that day with me each week.” 

For a short time Miss Paget felt sure she had done wisely in returning 
to her normal mode of life. 

‘‘It is very good of you to give up so much, Helen, without even a 
murmur,” Victor said admiringly. 

“ Poor papa, it is too bad to make a cat’s-paw of him like this ! He 
hardly knows whether I am in the house or out of it after dinner when 
we are alone, unless he has mislaid a dictionary,” thought Miss Paget. 
But though she did not enjoy the deceit, her eyes brightened with pleas- 
ure at Victor’s quick appreciation of her supposed unselfishness. 

“ Fortunately, papa is fond of the theatre, and we are to have some 
good opera comique soon,” she said. “ Oh, the joy of looking at pink- 
silk bodices instead of watching old gentlemen dining; of seeing pret- 
tily painted creatures giving joyful hops instead of retailing washed-out 
moralities !” 

Victor came much oftener than the appointed Saturday evenings. 
Miss Paget’s vivacious talk, her enthusiasm as to all he did or said, 
proved a centre for his thoughts. Events acquired an added interest for 
him from the charm of reviewing them with her. She was never diflS- 
cult or exacting with him. She was so much above the average run of 
girls he met, in intelligence, tact, and insight ; there was a subtle flattery 
in the thought that she so highly prized his companionship. Her influ- 
ence over him was so largely of the moral kind, that it was in reality 
increased by the thought of her renouncing the more seductive dissipa- 
tions of society, so that her duties might be more loyally fulfilled in the 
quiet seclusion of home. 

But gradually the underlying strain of falseness in their relationship 
weighed on Miss Paget’s mind. She was conscious that she measured 


74 


THE SILENT SEA 


her words, modified her judgments, exaggerated her likes and dislikes — 
in a word, that she assiduously toned her mind to suit his. She knew 
that a part of her character was entirely shielded from his observation, 
that his estimate of her was in many respects falsely favorable, and that 
she could not trust his love to let him see her as she really was. 

“You are always so cheerful, Helen,” he would say. “ I think it must 
be the people who are constantly going to parties who get so awfully 
stale and dull.” 

“ Ah, you think I don’t depend on outside things for amusement ; but 
I do.” 

“ As, for example ?” 

“The solemn old dinner-parties, two hours long; the musical assem- 
blies, where the youngest performer is a cracked piano that came to 
South Australia with the first pioneers — ” 

“ And don’t forget the scientific conversaziones, where the aboriginal 
skulls are handed round,” said Victor, entering into the humor of the 
thing. 

“ Yes ; and the skeletons of rare beetles, which take away one’s breath 
with love and admiration.” 

They both laughed, and then Victor said, half ruefully, 

“Just the very things to which people never think of asking me.” 

“ No, my dear boy, you would be quite an anachronism there. Peo- 
ple would begin to ask how you came to wander so far out of your own 
century.” 

When Helen spoke like this, Victor felt how transparently sincere 
she was ; how little she shrank from dwelling to him on their disparity 
of years, which other girls would have done their best to ignore.' 

But while outwardly, and always in Victor’s society. Miss Paget had 
more rippling spirits, and seemed younger than was her wont of old, she 
secretly often fell into a nervous, morbid, anxious habit of mind, in which 
she seemed constantly to be waiting for news of disaster. If she was 
longer than usual in seeing Victor, if business or social engagements 
obliged him to hurry away after coming, if he appeared to be more 
thoughtful or in higher spirits than usual — all formed a subject for sur- 
mises, for doubts, for sickening apprehensions. How could she tell when 
the hour might come in which the invincible fascination of youth — the 
dewy April charm of a girl of sixteen or seventeen — might lead him to 
perceive that his Mogul proposal was a boyish freak cunningly encour- 
aged ? She knew that to see him, to be near him, to find his eye resting 
on her, to feel the pressure of his hand, the touch of his lips, made the 
blood in her veins course with strange, sharp tremors as if of imprisoned 
flame. It was like a revelation of what life really meant. 

Yet all the time she also knew that his feeling for her was essentially 


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75 


different. She made no illusions for herself on this point. Her great 
and only hope was that, as time went on, his frank, affectionate nature 
would gradually root itself in his attachment to her till it became a bond 
strong enough to weather all the storms and chances of life. But to 
have time granted to one — is not that the supreme gift invariably de- 
nied, the supreme denial that turns a possible victory into the most dis- 
astrous of failures ? 

In the midst of Miss Paget’s ceaseless turmoil of hopes and apprehen- 
sions, a day came on which she seemed to find all her fears verified. 

“By the way, have you heard, Helen, that Freddy Mason and Victor 
Fitz-Gibbon are evidently falling in love with each other?” said Mrs. Til- 
lotson, looking up from a hideous Afghan blanket she was tricotting for 
some bazaar. 

Miss Paget could never recollect what reply she made, but doubtless 
it was found satisfactory by her good, old, ancestral friend, who never 
went about without a packet of leaflet tracts and a large pouch of gossip, 
more or less inchoate. 

She rambled on with divers other morsels of intelligence, till her car- 
riage — which had been resumed once more, owing to a brilliant rise in 
silver shares — called to take her to some charity meeting in the city. 

Miss Paget sat for some time, overcome with a confused agitation, 
hardly knowing what thoughts passed through her mind, the first cohe- 
rent one of which she was conscious being, “ It is only what I have been 
expecting . . . and after a little I shall feel, perhaps, that it is a relief.” 

In the meantime she was stricken with a sensation of dull, physical 
prostration. She went to the window and involuntarily pushed it open, 
feeling that the atmosphere had suddenly grown very heavy. There 
were swallows wheeling over the fountain opposite, darting down to the 
water’s surface, and then taking short flights into the air, their clear twit- 
tering notes filling the whole atmosphere. An Ophir rose-bush near at 
hand drooped under a cataract of burning buds and early opening petals. 
In the near distance the city lay fringed all round with the wide, shadowy 
park-lands. To the east the hills, in softly curved folds, rose in the blue 
air, their slopes sprinkled with houses gleaming whitely in the midst of 
wide vineyards, orchards, and gardens, all bathed in the warm, still sun- 
shine of a cloudless September day. 

“ It is all very peaceful and beautiful. How much there is in the world 
one might care for !” Miss Paget said to herself, as she looked at the 
scene. Then she sighed, a short, half-sobbing sigh. “Am I going to 
cry ?” she said half aloud, as if there were some one near whose presence^ 
would save her from such imbecility. 

At that moment a messenger came from her father, and she hastened 
into the library. 


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“Helen, do you know anything of the second volume of my new 
Greek Anthology ? Then where can it be ? I want to look it ifp. I 
am not sure, but I strongly suspect that my old friend Codrington has 
treated an amphimacer as a dactyl. It is hard not to be able to consult 
any one on a point like this. Can any one tell me why a man like Aste- 
risk is called a professor of dead languages 

“ Unless it is, papa, that he sometimes wears a hood, and has, perhaps, 
cut open a toad,” answered Miss Paget, a suggestion which pleased her 
father. 

After sundry tomes and magazines had been turned over, the missing 
volume was discovered. While searching for it. Miss Paget suddenly 
thought that, of all the people she knew, no one retailed more baseless 
tales than Mrs. Tillotson. She would not believe this. And yet again, 
as she mused over the past two weeks, a hundred confirmatory proofs 
rose up. How very often of late had Victor been at the Masons’ house 
— how often had he spoken of the family ! Miss Paget, hardly know- 
ing what she did, seized a pen, and for the first time in her life gave ex- 
pression to the tremulous, all-absorbing emotion with which this love had 
flooded her life. Swift as the swiftest sea-swallows thoughts came to 
her. . . . Never, never before had the flower of vivid, adequate expression 
come so fully within her range. When she finished, she resolved to deny 
herself to Victor till he wrote to say this letter had reached him. She 
sealed and addressed it, then stared at it for a few moments, and tore it 
into tiny fragments. No, never would she so humiliate herself for the 
sake of any human being, or any possible happiness ! 

At half-past eight there was a ring at the hall-door. Miss Paget felt 
as if her heart were beating in her ears when she saw Victor entering. 
Had he come to tell her? 

“ Helen, you are not well,” he said, holding her hand as he looked 
into her face. He was in evening dress, and looked so young and light- 
hearted, and radiantly strong and well, it seemed as though his mere 
presence should give the lie to fear and gnawing care. 

“ Oh, it is only my throat that is a little queer,” answered Miss Paget. 

At the moment it was true, for she felt a dry, convulsive motion in it, 
and her voice sounded a little hoarse. Victor was all concern. 

“ Very likely you have been reading aloud to your father half the day?” 
he said, a little reproachfully. 

It darted through her mind like a sting that the picture limned of her 
in the young man’s mind was much more beautiful than the reality. For 
a moment she felt as if she must tell him all — her corroding fears, her 
miserable little subterfuges. But she managed to keep herself in hand. 

“I have read very little to-day,” she answered; “nothing, I believe, 
but an awfully stupid little story in a book I happened to pick up.” 


THE SILENT SEA 


11 


“ May I hear what it was?” 

‘‘ A mere nothing about an old French duke who had been very much 
in love, and then got very much out of it, and told the lady so, giving 
her at the same time very good advice.” 

He must have been a magnanimous child of nature,” said Victor, 
laughing. “ What could he find to say ?” 

“ Oh, he said, ‘ We loved each other once, but now it is quite over. 
Believe me, constancy is a very tiresome and a very doubtful virtue. It 
is much better to forget things when they are once done with. This is 
a very pretty little dog of yours. Who gave it to you V ” 

‘‘ Oh, he w^as jealous of her ! Mind, you are never to take a little dog 
from anybody but me, Helen,” said Victor. 

How buoyantly he laughed ! After all, there could not be a shadow 
of truth in the Tillotson story. He would not meet her eyes with such 
frank good-will if there were. He was on his way to a musical evening 
at a house not far off. He meant to come earlier, so as to be able to stay 
longer; but he had been kept at the ofilce, going over miles of figures 
with his uncle. When leaving, he expressed a hope that he should see 
her at a private dramatic entertainment at the house of the Masons. She 
had accepted tentatively for herself and her father. But she did not 
know till the curtain rose who the dramatis 'personae were. 

It is well established that no drama can have the distinction of being 
performed by amateurs unless it has a rejected and a successful lover. It 
seemed equally established just then, with some of the people who went 
in for such entertainments in Adelaide, that their success hung on securing 
Victor for the role of the triumphant lover. 

“ Nature moulded him for that part,” was the verdict of a young mar- 
ried lady, who seemed to cherish a conviction that nature had, with equal 
benevolence, designed herself for the part of the young woman who is 
agreeably harassed by rival suitors. But on the present occasion this 
role was sustained by Miss Freddy Mason, whose name had been coupled 
with Victor’s by- Mrs. Tillotson on the previous day. . . . Yes, she was 
very young, and often very pretty, with that sparkling, irregular kind of 
prettiness that is far more dangerous than beauty of a more refined and 
classic type. 

The play began with an amusing scene of a misunderstanding and a 
gradual reconciliation between the young lady and Victor. They both 
acted with great verve and an absence of the stiffness that so often ren- 
ders amateur actors so pathetic a failure. 

“ What a charming pair of lovers they make !” was whispered on all 
sides. 

Mrs. Tillotson, nodding and smiling, made her way to Miss Paget be- 
tween the acts. 


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“You see, my dear, it is as I told you,” she whispered. 

In the enthusiasm of watching a love-affair in its nascent stages, the 
good lady had quite forgotten her vague hopes regarding the niece whose 
designs for bellows were to be so much elevated by a study of the Old 
Masters. 

Miss Paget gave an answering smile, and said they were just the right 
age to play at being lovers without seeming ridiculous. To others who 
hinted and speculated in the same vein she made replies equally nimble 
and indifferent. 

She found it an interminable evening. Now and then she had a little 
sensation of giddiness, as if she were clambering over places with insuffi- 
cient foothold. But she chatted and smiled, and looked grave and arch, 
amused and sympathetic, quite at the right moments till the close. . . . 
She recalled posters she had seen on an old carved gateway at Cairo, 
announcing the arrival of some jugglers in big scarlet words that were 
specially eloquent as to the “ excentricites aeriennes par la jolie et I’ine- 
narrable equilibriste Mile. Cardinale.” She felt as if she were a sec- 
ond Mile. Cardinale, but, fortunately, without any audience beyond her- 
self. 

She told her father he looked fatigued. He admitted feeling so, and 
their carriage was ordered early. Victor overtook them in the hall. 

“You are going, Helen, and I have not even spoken to you,” he said 
in an undertone after he had shaken hands with her father. 

“ Oh, yes,” she answered, smiling, but there was no mirth in her eyes. 
“ All those pretty speeches you made as the Borneo of the play — I took 
them all to myself. Was I very silly ?” 

Despite her smile and the studied carelessness of her words, there was 
a strained, hard ring in her voice, and Victor regarded her with a half- 
puzzled, half-inquiring look. 

“Will you be at home to-morrow evening?” he said, as he followed 
her to the carriage. “ Then may I come for an hour or so ? Thank you 
so very much !” 

When he came, the first thing he spoke of was a letter which had 
reached the office that morning — the unexpected resignation of the purser 
at the mine in which he was now largely interested. Mr. Stuart Drum- 
mond was chairman of directors, and one of his clerks acted as town 
secretary. 

“ So here’s a chance for me to go into the Bush, Helen. Shall I go 
to the Colmar Mine ?” he said, half jestingly. 

Her heart leaped with a quick sense of deliverance at the thought. . . . 
Oh, if Victor were only safe in the social isolation of such a place for 
the next two or three months ! 

“The Colmar Mine! Where is that?” she asked, to gain time while 


THE SILENT SEA 79 

she debated with herself what would be the best grounds on which to 
urge his departure. 

They looked up a map of South Australia, and he showed her where- 
abouts in the midst of the Salt-bush country the Colmar reef stretched 
for miles from east to west. They both looked at it, neither of them 
speaking for a little. 

The evening was warm, and the doors and windows were wide open. 
In the distance rose the shrill whistle of a railway train ; nearer at hand 
the rumble of tram-cars and the roll of carriages. And in between these 
common sounds of a city stole at intervals the long-drawn, plaintive calls 
of a curlew from the midst of a bosky dell of weeping-willows on the 
banks of the Torrens. 

‘‘Wouldn’t it be dreadfully dull for you if you went there?” asked 
Miss Paget slowly. 

“ If I were, it would be a new sensation ; and you know you told me 
once on the Mogul that was one of the elements of happiness,” he an- 
swered, smiling. 

“Did I? I knew nothing about it then,” replied Miss Paget, half 
bitterly, as she realized how the new sensations of the past few weeks 
had robbed her of all peace of mind. “And you would have to rough 
it a good deal,” she added, after a pause. 

“Not very much. It would be a half-and-half sort of arrangement, 
without the joys of society or the bliss of lawlessness. That’s one 
reason why I didn’t take so very kindly to the thought of going — 
that and Uncle Stuart’s anxiety that I should take the billet for a 
couple of months. Now you see, Helen, what a cantankerous Irishman 
I am.” 

“ And the parties and amateur theatricals, don’t they count, too ?” 

“Ah, yes. By Jove, if I go. Miss Mason will have me drawn and 
quartered! We were to give three representations of the ‘Old Story’ 
in the next two weeks in aid of some charities.” 

Miss Paget would not trust herself to discuss Miss Mason’s view of 
the case. 

“You would sooner go in the prospecting party, then?” she said 
slowly. 

“Oh, yes. The travelling and camping out and cooking are so jolly 1 
Did you ever eat potatoes roasted in their jackets in hot ashes ?” 

“ No, never.” 

“Then, Helen, you don’t know how really heavenly minded a potato 
can be. And the teals cooked between red-hot stones in a hole in the 
ground, and the waking up at night with the stars shining through the 
gum-tree overhead, making their nightly procession across the sky, and 
all sorts of mysterious sounds in the woods ! That curlew — do you hear 


80 


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her? — brings it all back to me — the vacations we used to spend hunting 
on the Murray.” 

As Victor listened to the soft, wailing notes a strange and sudden 
sense of disappointment fell on him. Fortune had smiled on him far 
beyond his expectations in those boyish school-days not long gone by, 
and he was an affianced lover, for so in honor he considered himself. 
But what was it that had escaped him ? what inexplicable charm had 
eluded him ? A lover ! — and accepted ! The bare thought used to agi- 
tate him with shudders of vague delicious expectations, and now it was 
all so calm, so matter-of-fact. Was it the sobering influence of property 
and of being nearly come of age ? 

Unconsciously he was overtaken by one of those brief, wistful rev- 
eries that come alike to age and early youth. Age, with its fatigue and 
ennui, its weariness of disillusion and wasted effort, its growing indi- 
gence of feeling and of the springs of action, takes refuge in memories 
of that vanished springtide when none of the daughters of music were 
laid low. Youth, with it& keen, unworn senses, with its capacities of 
sensation deeper than the source of tears and laughter, vibrating to the 
verge of pain to all the mysterious calls of life, finds in such reveries a 
foretaste of the thrilling adventures, prophesied by the fulness of life 
that throbs in its veins and fancies. 

Miss Paget saw the look of dreamy absorption in Victor’s face, and 
the words “ evidently falling in love ” came back to her like a ghostly 
warning. 

“ One sees that you have made sonnets of it all before now, Victor,” 
said Miss Paget, uneasy at this lapse of sequence in their talk. 

He did not repel the insinuation. Indeed, it was over some of his 
boyish verses that their comradeship on the Mogul had first taken a ten- 
derer and more confidential tinge. 

“ I think one gets rather sick of so much town,” he said, with a short, 
half-checked sigh. 

‘‘ Well, if my wishes have weight with you, I say go to the Colmar 
Mine.” 

Victor looked a little taken aback at the calm seriousness of Miss 
Paget’s manner. She went on in the same earnest tone, 

“ I have been thinking for the last week or two that our months of 
waiting would be a more real probation if you went quite away.” 

“You would really like me to go, Helen? Then that decides the 
matter.” 

Victor closed the atlas, and stood up ; he strode to the open window, 
and then back to Miss Paget’s side. The prospect of plunging into a 
new mode of existence had in it some undefined element of relief. 

“ I’ll take a hammer or two and go prospecting till I discover a new 


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81 


gold-mine. I’ll load you with barbaric crowns of unalloyed metal when 
I return, Helen,” he said, with boyish glee. The greatest drawback is 
that Uncle Stuart will be pleased at my going. I wonder what the 
mater will say?” 

As for Miss Paget, she was so deeply moved that she could not at 
first trust herself to speak. She was overcome with a feeling of relief 
and thankfulness at this unlooked-for solution of the miserable and hu- 
miliating state of anxiety and unrest into which she had fallen. She 
despised herself for it, and fought against it all the time, but unavail- 
ingly. She had toki herself that she should in reality covet every oppor- 
tunity of putting Victor to the test of changing. But though she still 
retained the power of seeing things as they were, she had lost that of 
being dispassionate, or acting sincerely. She had gone on her way so 
placidly — with so cool and conscious a sejf-possession — all these years. 
The nearest approach to love-making in her life hitherto had been a few 
sober proposals of marriage from middle-aged men. They made her 
smile — the idea of people at their time of life risking their peaceful soli- 
tude by imitating the squires of troubadour songs. But no, they had 
no thought of emotion ; it was rather the prudent union of two suffi- 
cient incomes that had fired the imagination of her elderly swains. . . . 
And now, in the midst of her assured tranquillity,' she had been suddenly 
snared. It seemed as if her limits in the range of other emotions, and 
those biting memories of an unhappy, loveless girlhood, all combined to 
make her cling to this one passionate affection with a vehemence which 
held her will and judgment in subjection. 

Her voice was a little shaken, but she smiled as she said, 

“ But though your uncle may be pleased, some others will be sorry. 
Bemember, Miss Mason — ” 

“ Oh, yes ! Can you keep a secret, Helen ? That young lady is to 
be my sister-in-law. Lance has proposed, and is accepted.. They are 
waiting for her father’s consent. Lance doesn’t expect the paternal bless- 
ing till he gets a rise.” 

“ Oh, really !” 

This was all Miss Paget’s response to the news which scattered her 
worst fears to the wind. But she did not regret having helped Victor 
to decide on going to the mine. Still less so when, a few days before 
he left town, her father suddenly resolved to go to Colombo to meet an 
old friend there, wLo had been ordered by his doctor to leave England 
for a warmer climate. 

‘‘Perhaps we may bring Professor Codrington back wdth us, Helen,” 
said her father. 

And when Miss Paget made some rather irrelevant reply, he said, in 
a somewhat severe tone, 


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My dear, I presume you are aware that he is the greatest living au- 
thority on classic metres ?” 

This information Miss Paget duly communicated to Victor when he 
came to say good-by. 

“ Well, don’t you let him present you with a little dog, else I’ll be 
making speeches to you on the wisdom of forgetting things,” said Vic- 
tor gayly. 

Then he kissed her and went away. When she was alone Miss Paget 
crouched down as if strength had suddenly departed from her. 

“ But I will retain the command of myself,” she murmured brokenly. 

And she registered a great vow that, come what might, she would 
not, till the period of probation was over, betray the strength of the 
passion that had mastered her nature. 


CHAPTER XL 

The Colmar Mine is three hundred miles to the northeast of Ade- 
laide, in the Hundred of Colmar, in the heart of the Salt-bush country 
— a far-reaching district, known variously according to the local varia- 
tions as the Salt-bush Wilderness, the Dwarf Desert, and the Waterless 
Country. But by whatever name it may be familiar before it is seen, 
the region transcends in uncompromising bareness any mental vision 
that may be evoked by its names. 

A wilderness calls up a sombre, uninhabited country; a desert, land 
that has never been tilled ; while waterless country is in itself a descrip- 
tion of parched-up barrenness. But a wilderness may have luxuriant herb- 
age. A desert may consist of leafy scrub or shady forest. And a land 
in which rain is seldom seen, and rivers never, yet sometimes has great 
rocks whose shadow’, falling on the thirsty ground, may serve as a 
symbol of man’s salvation. But in this eerie waste there is no grass, no 
trees, no water — hardly the semblance of a hill. In many parts the sole 
vegetation consists of the salt-bush, a sad-colored, low-creeping bush, 
more gray than green, which breaks, when trodden on, with a brittle 
snap like dry stubble. 

In some places the salt-bush grows in sparse clumps, in others the 
shrub is dense, and spreads more continuously. And yet again there 
are wide stretches in which the earth lies almost naked, baked into red- 
dish, gaping fissures. When rain falls, it is with a tempestuous rush — in 
a fury that lashes the earth instead of nourishing it into fruitfulness. 
The stony water-courses are at such times filled with water; but high 


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83 


as it may rise, in a few days all traces of it disappear. The slender 
gray-green filaments of nameless plants die away. The earth, lying in 
flat, monotonous uniformity ; the cloudless sky, pallid with continual 
heat; the wide, majestic sweep of the horizon, where the silent earth 
seems to pass into the quiet sky ; the austere desolation and sterility — 
these are the things that remain. 

The air is seldom cloven with the beating of a bird’s wings. Still 
more rarely does the presence of man break the solitude. Sheep-runs 
are few and far between. Many that were once fairly prosperous are 
now forsaken. The squatter might struggle with the chronic drought, 
for the salt-bush is an ascetic that has learned the secret of living with- 
out water in very barren soil, and sheep that are to the manner born can 
live on salt-bush. But a more implacable foe than drought came in the 
rabbit, who is fruitful, and multiplies in these arid regions, till every 
other creature that has the breath of life is exterminated. The rabbits 
swarm in the Hundred of Colmar, but they cannot affect its chief in- 
dustry, which is mining. The country is here intersected with low, 
sullen-looking reefs, running chiefly from east to west, marked at vary- 
ing intervals by iron-stone outcrops. It is on the southern side, near 
the western end of one of these reefs, that the Colmar Mine is situated, 
within eighteen miles of Nilpeena, a small township on the Great North- 
ern Railway line. Half a mile to the southwest of the mine there is a 
township, also called Colmar, that sprang into existence when the mine 
was started. An inn, two stores, a blacksmith’s forge, a school-room, a 
post and telegraph- office, a boarding-house or two for the miners, com- 
prise the bulk of the houses, all, with the exception of the front part of 
the inn, made of iron. 

The country between Nilpeena and Colmar is partly wooded, partly 
dotted with reefs, and the reefs are dotted with the remains of many 
attempts at reaping an underground harvest out of the earth, whose sur- 
face looks as barren as that of the barren sea. It is apparent to the 
least instructed eye that the country is rich in minerals. Gold, silver, 
and copper have been found there, but the land is mostly waterless, and 
operations for the most part have been fitful, erratic, and unskilful. 
Thus out of thirty so-called mines and diggings that have been started 
within a radius of forty miles in the Colmar district, all except half a 
dozen remain ineffectual beginnings. 

Their sites are marked by the squalid debris of heaps of dirt and 
stones that look as if burrowed up by larger rabbits than those that have 
come to be the normal proprietors of the country. Around these heaps 
' lie smaller ones — crude chimney-stacks of unmortared stones; rotting 
sacks, full of native grasses, that have served as mattresses ; broken tent- 
poles, with fluttering strips of tattered calico or duck ; smashed bottles ; 


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empty, rusting tins ; shreds of slop-store clothing ; battered “ billy ’’-cans ; 
old hats, whose slovenly, greasy brims speak eloquently of the loafers that 
make up a large proportion of the nomads, ever on the move to these 
shifting El Dorados, where in a few days some “lucky beggar” has 
picked up enough gold to keep him in grog and idleness for a couple 
of months or years, as the case may be. The Salt-bush country, as has 
been said, is, for the most part, a desert waste, with but few traces of 
man’s presence. But those that are found in the form of deserted shafts 
and the sites of small, alluvial diggings, degrade and vulgarize the land- 
scape. 

Even the Colmar Mine, which, since it first came into existence twenty 
years ago, has never been quite deserted, and is, as gold-mines go in 
South Australia, on a large and prosperous scale, forms an unsightly 
excrescence in the wide, austere, and melancholy plain that stretches 
around it to unimaginable distances. The enormous stack vomiting out 
smoke night and day, the long, irregular engine-house of galvanized iron, 
with its perpetual roar of machinery, the great heaps of bluish mullock, 
the equally massive mounds of red and chocolate-colored tailings, the 
groups of squalid iron huts and motley patched tents in which the 
miners live, each feature speaks of a form of existence radically divorced 
from all that constitutes civilized life; an existence, for the most part, 
unlovely as that of a tribe of savages, but without the savage tribe’s 
picturesque wanderings ; also, it may be added, without its occasional 
famines. But though the daily routine and surroundings of the Colmar 
Mine are dull and prosaic to a degree, its history is not without some 
spice of adventure and variety. Gold was first found there by a solitary 
bushman, who had gone prospecting, and came upon a rich gutter of 
gold near the surface, from which he extracted over £500 worth of gold 
in a few weeks. He was robbed and murdered by two tramps, who 
surprised him as he was about to carry away his treasure. The mur- 
derers were convicted and hanged. The notoriety thus gained by the 
Colmar, as a place in which a man with a pick and shovel and a dig- 
ger’s dish might pick up a couple of hundred pounds a week, caused a 
great rush to the neighborhood. But once the gravelly drifts of an old 
water-course had been exhausted, the place proved to have little alluvial 
gold. A long, low reef close to the old creek was found, however, to 
have a very rich lode. In a short time a company was fioated, chiefiy 
with English capital. 

Expensive machinery was bought ; a large, substantial house for the 
mining manager and numerous offices were erected. In short, everything 
was done on that handsome and lavish scale in which business is so often 
conducted when it consists in paying away other people’s money. After 
a few years, during which the directors drew handsome fees, and the 


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85 


shareholders^ experience largely consisted in paying unexpected calls, the 
English company was wound up, and the Colmar Mine was bought by a 
Melbourne syndicate. The new company had a shaft sunk a quarter of 
a mile away from the old one, at what proved to be a junction of lodes 
in “kindly country.” The results were for a time sensationally good. 
The sweet simplicity of high monthly dividends was maintained for 
nearly two years. During that time the Melbourne syndicate placed 
the shares on the Adelaide market and sold them all at an astonishingly 
profitable rate. It was then that Mr. Shaw Drummond became so large 
a shareholder. Three years afterwards the dividends waned, and then 
finally stopped for more than two years. People said the lode had 
pinched out, and shares were very low indeed. 

Then came a succession of sensational crushings. New shares were 
issued, and the capital thus called up w^as devoted to fresh development. 
Dividends were once more resumed in an intermittent way. So the Col- 
mar. Mine went on for years after it was owned by an Adelaide company 
— sometimes almost coming to a standstill, at others galvanized into 
feverish popularity by extraordinarily good crushings ; sometimes paying 
phenomenal dividends, at other times none. One year it would be well 
managed ; another well robbed. One month yielding forty per cent, on 
the capital invested ; the next, perhaps not enough to cover working 
expenses. 

At last, after the history of the Colmar had been for two years more 
erratic than ever, an American manager of great skill and experience was 
secured. For more than a year Mr. Joseph S. Dunning worked the Col- 
mar Mine at a wonderfully reduced cost and a rapidly increasing profit. 
But once more, what people began to call the bad luck of the mine re- 
asserted itself. One afternoon Dunning went down into the mine hale 
and well, and half an hour later was taken out a corpse, through the care- 
lessness, or ignorance, of a new “ shift-boss,” who had at the wrong time 
set a fuse to a charge of dynamite. The directors despaired of finding 
any one worthy of coming after the lamented American manager. But 
in the course of a week they succeeded in inducing an exceptionally good 
all-round man to take the position of manager at least tentatively — one 
whose mining experience was wide and thorough, and whose character 
stood high for probity. This was William Trevaskis, a justice of the 
peace and late M.P. for a town constituency. He had made a fortune 
chiefiy by mining, but through two financial disasters, which occurred 
almost simultaneously — the roguery of a man with whom he had been 
in partnership as a land-agent, and the failure of a local bank in which 
he had been largely interested — Trevaskis had in a short time been ren- 
dered almost penniless. 

He reached the mine one morning in September, nine days before 


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Victor Fitz-Gibbon came there as purser. One of the periodic droughts 
of the district was raging that season, and a high north wind was blow- 
ing, which blurred the light of the sun and made the air thick with grit 
and blinding dust. This was more especially the case in the vicinity of 
the mine, where the vast heaps of mullock and tailings dispersed them- 
selves in the atmosphere on the slightest provocation. 

“ Thick enough to cut with a shovel, isn’t it, captain ?” said Searle, the 
then purser of the mine, who was showing the new manager over the 
offices. 

‘‘Is it often like this?” asked Trevaskis in a gruff voice, rubbing the 
dust out of his eyes. 

“ Oh, not more than three days a week, till November. But from 
November till — ” 

“ What in thunder is the use of that long iron passage ?” said Trevas- 
kis in a tone of amazement. 

The two had come round out of the assay-room and the purser’s office, 
which were at the southern end of the row of buildings generically termed 
“ the offices.” At the northern end was the manager’s office, with a bed- 
room opening out of it at the back. There were six rooms in all, one 
opening into the other. The three between the manager’s office and the 
purser’s were used as store-rooms. 

“I was waiting for you to exclaim about that passage, captain,” said 
Searle, with a delighted chuckle. He was a plump, red-faced little man, 
in a continual effusion of garrulity, without the power of discriminating 
between a contemptuous and a deeply interested listener. He had been 
four years in the mine off and on, and was never so happy as when he 
was showing a new-comer round the place for the first time, telling end- 
less stories about it, dwelling with immense complacency on all that made 
it, “taken all in all, the most remarkable mine in the whole of South 
Australia, perhaps, indeed, on this side of the Southern Cross.” 

As Trevaskis stood staring at the long narrow passage of corrugated 
iron, six feet high, with a flat roof of the same material, lit at intervals 
by small, single panes of glass let into the sides, Searle felt that the mo- 
ment had come for him to fire off this sentence on the “ captain.” But 
he had hardly made a beginning when Trevaskis turned away from him 
with an impatient and scornful grunt. 

“ Is this the key of my office ?” he said shortly, fumbling among the 
bunch Searle had given him. The purser stood open-mouthed, hardly 
crediting his senses. He had impatiently awaited the proud and happy 
moment when this strange passage, which started from the manager’s 
office and terminated at the other end in an irregular circular iron build- 
ing on the side of the reef, should strike the stranger with unbounded 
astonishment and curiosity. And now the new manager gave an ill-man- 


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nered grunt, and turned his back on one of the most distinctive and mys- 
terious features of the Colmar Mine. 

“ Allow me, captain,” said Searle, recovering his scattered senses, and 
unlocking the door. When he turned round he caught Trevaskis’s eyes 
fixed on the passage with a puzzled look. This was balm to Searle’s 
wounded feelings, and he instantly attacked the subject once more. 
“ Did you ever see the like of that at a mine before, captain ?” he asked 
briskly. 

I can’t say that I have. What is it for ?” 

‘‘ You see the length of it — or at least you would if the wind was not 
so thick with dust. It is three hundred and twenty feet in length — three 
hundred and twenty feet — six feet high and six feet wide — and — ” 

“But what the devil is it for?” 

But Searle, who never stopped talking as long as he could get a lis- 
tener, was too often forced to tell a thrice-told tale. He was conse- 
quently not inclined to waste a subject so criminally as to come so soon 
to the point. 

“ You see this key, captain ?” he said, holding up one of the door-keys 
on the manager’s bunch that was smaller than the rest. “ Well, that key 
opens this door at the end of your office, and when you open that door 
you’re in the passage. You go along that passage for three hundred and 
twenty feet, and then you come to a cave — a regular cave made into a 
large-sized room — scooped out of the side of the reef, and ventilated 
with a stope. The room is full of old machinery that belonged to the 
English company — a couple of furnaces, retorts, blanket tables, a bunk 
near the entrance, a table, a chair — ” 

Searle paused to take breath. He fully expected that before he had 
reached so far in his description, Trevaskis would have set off down the 
passage to examine the place for himself. But instead of this his face 
wore a look of stony indifference. 

“ It’s simply marvellous !” he gasped, making a despairing effort to 
infect his listener with a little becoming enthusiasm. 

“What is marvellous?” 

“Why, that big underground place tunnelled into the reef, and con- 
nected with the manager’s office by a passage three hundred and twen- 

ty— ’ 

“ Damn the three hundred and twenty feet !” cried Trevaskis, in a 
tone of intense irritation. “ What is the thing used for ?” 

“ First there was some sort of natural cave, they say, and this was 
much enlarged. This enlargement was first undertaken by one Doolan,” 
returned Searle, in a grave, unmoved, historical kind of voice. “That 
was before ray time. They say he felt the heat dreadfully, and used to 
stay down there cool and quiet, without noise or dust, when the ther- 


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mometer went above one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade. The 
next manager took it into his head that he got on the track of a good 
lode there, and set some men to work it. This made the place still 
larger, but I don’t know about the gold. There were a lot of queer yarns 
fioating round, I believe.” 

“Did you ever know a mine that hadn’t a bagful of lies told about it 
every week ?” said Trevaskis, who was longing for an opportunity to have 
done with these reminiscences of his predecessors. 

“ Well, every manager that comes seems to think the one before him 
was a fool or a rogue.” 

“ I think some of the managers you’ve had here were both,” said Tre- 
vaskis. “ I’m sure the man who made this passage — ” 

“ Ah, I’m coming to that. This passage was made by Webster — ” 

“ What ! the man who turned miser here, and then went mad ?” 

“ The same, captain. I don’t want to make any one out blacker than 
he is, but I’d just like to tell you what I know myself personally — ” 

“ Thank you. I’m afraid I haven’t got time to-day,” answered Trevas- 
kis, pulling out his watch. “ We must confine ourselves for the rest of 
the time to business. It isn’t a very cheerful subject. Webster became 
a raving lunatic ; Dunning was killed in the twinkling of an eye. It only 
remains for me to cut my throat to finish up the record. Well, I only 
came for a month to try it. I don’t fancy I shall stay longer than that.” 

Never had Searle been more bitterly disappointed in his anticipations 
of acting as showman to the Colmar Mine. It was bad enough to treat 
the cave room and the passage three hundred and twenty feet long with 
surly contempt, but to have the history of Webster — of whom Searle 
could never think without a certain shiver in the marrow of his back- 
bone — put by and passed over like an old woman’s ghost-story! The 
little man’s heart swelled within him, and he went through the rest of 
his duties with Trevaskis observing the most dignified reserve. 

When at half-past one he watched Trevaskis going to dinner at the 
Colmar Arms with a lowering brow and a set look on his face, the 
purser, though the least vindictive of men, felt assured that if the new 
captain took himself off at the end of a month he would be no loss to 
good-fellowship — an opinion he felt no scruple in expressing to the en- 
gineer, with whom he boarded at the three-roomed weather-board hut of 
one of the shift-bosses close to the mine. 

“ I believe you’re right there, Tom,” said the engineer. “ You see, he 
was at the top of the tree a short time ago in town. I think, having to 
come here has put him off his chump so much, he’ll never have a civil 
word to throw at a dog. But as to chucking up six hundred pounds a 
year with times so bad — why, that’s another matter.” 

This was exactly the aspect of the case which was at that moment 


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forcing itself on Trevaskis. When he reached the Colmar Arms he was 
met at tbe front door by the landlady, a lean, untidy-looking woman 
with a very tired and discouraged face, who showed him into the dining- 
room, talking all the time. 

“ I thought you was the new captain. Long Ben, the driver, told us 
as you ’ad come, but I didn’t think as you was coming to dinner, not 
bein’ ’ere at one. Poor Cap’en Dunning always come at one to the 
minute. Did you ’ear, sir, as he ’adn’t gone half an hour from the 
Colmar Arms, after a dinner of young duck and cauliflower, when he 
was called away into eternity, so to speak?” 

“ Ever since I came within a hundred miles of the Colmar, every soul 
I see tells me about Dunning’s sudden death ! And now, if you please, 
I want a little dinner,” said Trevaskis. 

The landlady, with subdued volubility, said she would do the best she 
could, but she had expected him at one. Poor Cap’en Dunning always 
came so regular at one, and things was very mixed with them then at 
the Arms. They had just moved into the front part, which the cap’en 
no doubt noticed was of stone. The baby, who was a little over two 
years old, was cutting some back teeth ; the cook had married at an 
hour’s notice, just because there was a man handy to have her, and a 
Methody parson chanced to pass through ; and the housemaid was down 
with a bad cold. These details were imparted in detachments, while the 
good woman placed on the table half a dozen fried chops, a loaf of bread, 
a two-pound tin of apricot jam, a pound of oily butter, and a large Bri- 
tannia metal teapot half full of coarse, lukewarm tea. 

The new manager made a valiant effort to make some sort of a meal 
off these viands. But the attempt only sickened him and took away all 
appetite. The chops were tough, raw, cold, and greasy, the tea barky 
and bitter, the milk slightly sour. Trevaskis pushed away the meat, and 
drew the jam towards him. There were two large flies firmly embedded 
on the surface. . . . They were everywhere, these flies, large and small, 
buzzing in his ears and eyes — great flesh-flies beating heavily against the 
window-panes. The big, bare room, with a long table covered with a 
spotted cloth and an array of dim glasses ; the woman in the soiled print 
dress, with her dull, jaded face and wearied eyes, and the whining child 
dragging at her skirts ; the smell of raw linseed-oil in the new paint, of 
damp mortar in the newly built walls; the burst of loutish merriment 
that came wafted from time to time through the open doors from the 
bar-room ; the look of the country as seen through the window — all 
weighed on the man’s mind like a hideous nightmare. He had been 
deeply miserable and irritated all day — indeed, for many days back. 
But at this moment it was no longer misery, it was despair that fell on 
him. 


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“ Good God ! what a hole to come to after all these years muttered 
Trevaskis to himself. He was a stalwart, powerfully built man, with a 
long and rather narrow face, the lower part completely covered with a 
thick, grizzled beard and moustache. His nose was long, and slightly 
curved a little to one side at the end, through an accident in early life. 
His eyes were pale, with a greenish light in them, keen in expression, 
and very close together. In moments of excitement the pupils would 
seem to elongate in a way that gave them rather a sinister look. The 
head was well formed, the forehead square. Ordinarily he had the 
alert, determined air of one wht) does not let his thoughts travel beyond 
the matter in hand, with no superfluous words or imagination to bestow 
on any subject beyond his own especial routine. But just now his face 
wore the strained and haggard look of one who has been badly beaten in 
the race of life. The landlady, seeing that he had eaten nothing, brought 
in a plate of biscuits and some cheese. But Trevaskis gruffly declined 
these delicacies, and ordered her to bring him some whiskey and soda- 
water. Then he lit a strong Havana cigar, and as he smoked and sipped 
the whiskey his courage revived. He would face the risk of being out of 
employment and out of pocket in civilized life rather than stay on at the 
Colmar. The directors, in their eagerness to secure him, had employed 
him on his own terms. It would be better to let them know at once he 
would not stay beyond the month. 

He pulled a large, flat pocket-book out of the breast-pocket of his coat, 
and turned over some papers, looking for a blank half-sheet on which to 
draw up a draft of the communication he would send on the morrow. 
The first letter that caught his eye was one from his brother, expressing 
rather clumsily the pleasure it gave him to hear Trevaskis had got a good 
job with high wages. Dick, he said, was getting on well in the bank, 
and they were both grateful to him for the billet. 

It was a very illiterate, ill-spelled scrawl, and curiously brought back to 
Trevaskis the days of his early boyhood, when he and his brother worked 
together in a Cornish mine. It was a squalid, hard life — both of them 
unkempt and uncared for, their mother dead, their father rough and in- 
temperate. From eight years of age till sixteen, thought Trevaskis, that 
was a long spell to work twelve hours out of the twenty-four — often 
hungry, most of the time barefooted. Then he reviewed his long fight 
for wealth in Australia. Poverty and the squalor of his early life had so 
bitten into him that he had sworn a great oath he would make himself 
independent — yes, and rich, as many another had done in the Southern 
Hemisphere. 

And gradually through long years of ascetic abstinence and the most 
rigid self-denial he achieved his purpose. He stuck to mining; it was 
the work he understood best — first on the tribute plan, then on claims of 


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91 


his own ; and all his money as he saved it he put into careful invest- 
ments. He had gone almost hungry, certainly very dirty, and in very 
broken boots, once when he was working in a poor patch of country, 
which did not yield “tucker” money. And yet at that time the savings 
on which he would not encroach had swelled to £4000. After that crisis 
his gains had increased by leaps and bounds. And at last, after seven- 
teen years of toilsome, lonely work and rigid saving, he found himself 
the master of over £60,000. He had determined he would have enough 
to live on like a gentleman before he left the Bush. 

When he did so he lived in Adelaide, rented a handsome house, kept 
his carriage, went into Parliament, and married the daughter of a well-to- 
do doctor, “ a lady born,” as he often proudly said to himself. Even if 
he had known — and he did not — that his father-in-law was the son of a 
retired butcher, the knowledge would not have modified this exultant 
feeling. His long apprenticeship to work in its grimiest form, moiling 
in the dirt with soiled skin and filthy clothing, made him keenly sensible 
of all the graces and pleasantness of aflSuence. He never quite lost his 
first vivid impression of delight in the soft ease, the luxury, the perfect 
cleanliness of well-to-do households. The feel of soft carpets underfoot, 
the gleam of pictures on the walls, the glitter of silver on the table, the 
taste of dainty food well cooked, the rustle of ladies’ silken gowns, the 
gleam of jewels on their arms and necks: these things would always 
have a higher worth for him than for those to whom they were familiar 
from childhood. To him they represented the highest good, the great- 
est enjoyment, of which man is capable. They were the symbol of that 
privileged exalted life of which his forefathers had caught passing 
glimpses behind barred gates and through the corridors leading from 
servants’ halls. 

“And, after all, I’ve come back to it again — this damned mucky life 
among dirty laborers, and in a worse place than I’ve ever set foot in be- 
fore. I might as well be a wombat in an earthed-up burrow,” he said to 
himself, closing up his pocket-book. He could not frame a draft of the 
letter he thought of writing ; the fear of absolute want stared him in the 
face. He could do nothing but ponder in bitterness of heart on the rec- 
ord of his life : his twenty-five years of ignominious toil, his aspirations, 
his determination to succeed, his eight years of complete and assured 
success, and then his complete and bitter failure. He took up his hat, 
and, crushing it over his eyes, strode away to the lonely, cheerless rooms 
that now formed his only home. 


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CHAPTER XIL 

“ Are you busy, captain ? may I come in said Searle, knocking at 
the half-open door of the manager’s office three days later. 

‘‘ Yes, come in,” said Trevaskis, without raising his eyes from the let- 
ter he was reading. 

Searle waited a few moments, and then, with a rising choler that was 
new to him, he said, 

“ I had better see you when you’re more at liberty ; I have a very im- 
portant — ” 

“ Oh, go ahead ! Have you overpaid some fellow by a couple of 
bob?” 

‘‘ I want to give notice ; I must leave the mine as soon as possible,” 
said the purser, with a quiver in his voice. 

And then he explained how a letter had come to him by that morn- 
ing’s post from his brother, who was a storekeeper at Wilcannia, and 
had broken his right arm rather badly. 

“ I have an interest in the business ; in fact, all my savings are in it, 
and now my brother offers me a partnership, and wants me to start at 
once if I can. I would like to give a month’s notice, but I’m afraid I 
can’t.” 

“ All right ; just put it in black and white, and I’ll send it on ; I don’t 
suppose it matters about a long notice. There are scores of poor devils 
looking for a job in town just now who’ll be glad of the billet.” 

“ They might be glad of it ; it doesn’t follow they would be fit for 
the position,” answered Searle. 

“ The position ! Do you call it a position, then ?” said Trevaskis, with 
a harsh laugh. 

Further acquaintance had not improved the relations between the two. 
It seemed to Searle that the manager had from the first an unaccount- 
able “ down ” on him. As a matter of fact, a fellow with too much of 
a gab,” as he would phrase it, was always antagonistic to Trevaskis ; 
and in the bitter mortification that possessed him — the sense of intense 
irritation, which grew greater instead of diminishing, as hour by hour 
brought home to him more clearly the complete social annihilation that 
had fallen on him — it afforded him a certain gratification to inflict an- 
noyance on others. And to make matters worse, Searle found out that 


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Trevaskis had spoken slightingly of him. It was told to him with the 
kindest intentions, but the result was not an increase of harmony. 

Robert Challoner had called on Trevaskis the day after he came, and 
invited him to Stonehouse, as the managerial dwelling-house had been 
called when erected nineteen years before, and it enjoyed the distinction 
of being the first stone house in the Colmar district. It was at the foot 
of the reef on the northern side, where the reef was at its steepest, com- 
pletely closing in the view southward, so that from Stonehpuse nothing 
could be seen of the mine or its surroundings. There was also an avenue 
of blue gums and pepper-trees round the house, which further helped to 
mitigate the stern aridity of its surroundings. It faced the west, where 
the fiat, illimitable plain all round was faintly broken in the far distance 
by pale-blue lines, one beyond the other, known as the Euckalowie 
Ranges. The house was surrounded by a deep veranda, and there was a 
bay-window on each side of the front door. One of these was open, and 
as Trevaskis went in with Challoner, who had met him at the gate, he 
saw a young girl looking out, whose face, wdth its rare, dream-like beauty 
and deep, sweet seriousness, held him for a moment spell-bound. 

The exquisite orderliness and tokens of refinement in the place, the 
welcome accorded to him by Mrs. Challoner, and the generous nature of 
the bottle of wine he drank with his host, all disposed Trevaskis to a 
more genial mood than he had experienced since setting foot on the 
mine. 

“You see, if you feel inclined to have your family here after we leave 
at Christmas — indeed, we may leave a few weeks before our lease is up 
— you will have plenty of room,” said Challoner. 

But Trevaskis shook his head. 

“Mrs. Trevaskis is rather delicate — always accustomed to plenty of 
servants and society and all that; and we have five young children. She 
would never consent to come, and I wouldn’t ask her. Searle has a bed- 
room here ?” he added after a pause. ^ 

“ Yes ; he always slept in the house to take care of it before we came ; 
now we take care of him,” said Challoner, smiling. 

Then, noticing a hard, irresponsive look in Trevaskis’s face, and know- 
ing through Searle that the two didn’t hit it very well, he tried to throw 
a little oil on the troubled waters by saying, 

“ He is really a very good fellow in his way, so trustworthy and good- 
natured.” 

“ But what a tongue ! I think it would be a very good thing for him 
to be put in solitary confinement for twelve months, so as to get him 
out of jabbering eternally. I never could stand a very talkative man,” 
said Trevaskis, with so much irritation that Challoner was rather taken 
aback. 


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He could not deny Searle’s garrulity, but he felt that the new manager 
was unjust to him in laying so much stress on the defect. Both men 
smoked for a little time in silence. 

During the pause, the strains of a very sweet, plaintive melody, played 
on a pianoforte in the adjoining room, became audible. Trevaskis lis- 
tened with rapt attention. 

“ That is Miss Lindsay playing — the young lady you saw as we came 
in,” said Challoner. 

“ I should like to hear her nearer,” replied Trevaskis — “ if it is con- 
venient,” he added, as he noticed a certain hesitation in Challoner’s man- 
ner. 

I will ask my wife. If — ” 

“ No, no ! I see it is later than I thought,” said Trevaskis, starting up, 
a deep, hot flush rising in his face. He stared at his watch hard — not 
that the time was of any importance to him, but because in the sudden 
revulsion of feeling, the deep annoyance and confusion, he hardly knew 
what he did. He bade Challoner a hasty good-by, and without waiting 
to see Mrs. Challoner, or leaving any message, he strode away, deeply, 
irretrievably offended. 

I ought to have put it more gracefully, I suppose,” said Challoner, 
staring after him. 

Mrs. Challoner came into the room a few minutes later, and looked 
round in amazement at flnding her husband alone. 

He is gone ; I am afraid he is a little huffed,” Challoner said, in his 
slowly contemplative way, and then he told his wife what had happened. 
“ I would have explained to him that Miss Lindsay was not so much our 
guest, as a young lady in our care with her own rooms and servant, and 
that we could not ask any one into her room without leave'; but he went 
off in sparks, as James would say. And you know, wife, I canT take 
people by the throat to put them into good-humor, and reel off a speech 
in half a minute to make them see how things stand.” 

“ I am afraid he will be a bad successor to poor Dunning, if he has 
such a disagreeable nature. And I am sorry for him, too, poor man ! I 
thought he looked very low-spirited.” 

“ It’s conceit, my dear — it’s conceit,” returned Challoner. “ You may 
speak of the pride of the people in the old country, whose genealogy 
didn’t stop this side of Adam, but they’re humble and companionable 
compared to men like Trevaskis,” said Challoner, who was a quietly ob- 
servant man, with an innate perception of character, strengthened by that 
eye-to-eye intercourse with his kind which prevails in these lonely spaces 
of the earth, where human nature plays a larger part than convention. 
He returned to the subject that evening. 

“ You can see Trevaskis is the sort of man who can be uncommonly 


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95 


nasty if he chooses, and I’m afraid he has taken a dislike to poor old 
Searle.” Then he repeated to his wife what Trevaskis had said, and she 
suggested that he should give Searle a hint. 

“Just tell him, Robert, that you can see the new manager is one of 
those people very reticent, and disliking unnecessary talk. He won’t 
take it amiss, you know, he’s so good-natured.” 

“ Yes, he has no more gall in him than a pigeon ; I wish — ” Before 
the wish found expression there was a sound of footsteps on the veranda. 

“ Now, Robert, have a talk with him ; just try and smooth matters,” 
said Mrs. Challoner as she left the room, for they both recognized Searle’s 
footsteps. His bedroom was on the reef-end of the house, with a door 
opening on the veranda, so that he could get into his room without go- 
ing through any other part of the house. But it was understood when 
there was a light in the general sitting-room, Searle should come in and 
have a crack if he felt so disposed. He did so on this occasion, and 
soon gave Challoner the opening which he did not desire, but which, as 
a dutiful husband, he felt impelled to turn to advantage. 

“ The new manager is, no doubt, a very clever man,” said Searle, in a 
would-be dispassionate tone ; “ but if he doesn’t learn to keep a civiller 
tongue in his head. I’m mistaken if he won’t have the miners by the ears 
before long.” 

On this Challoner rushed in rnedias res. He found himself, at the end 
of what he had to say, with Searle aggrieved, disturbed, and questioning. 
Challoner had little of the diplomat in him. What he had to say must 
come out square and unabashed, with no gentle inferences, no half-tones. 
All these might exist in his intentions, but he had not the power of turn- 
ing words to exquisite purposes and curious niceties of speech. He could 
.not express the finer shades of sentiment, although he felt them. He 
was astonished at the look of deep resentment on Searle’s face. Garru- 
lous people are never without a deep substratum of self-complacency, and 
the purser was wounded to the quick. If there was one thing on which 
he prided himself it was on his ability to talk well and fluently, to be by 
turns grave and gay, instructive and amusing. 

During the days that followed he spoke to the manager only in mono- 
syllables. But the joy of revenge was sobered by a suspicion that the 
less he talked the more pleased Trevaskis was. It is very likely Searle 
would ngt have so promptly responded to his brother’s proposal to join 
him in storekeeping if it were not for the craving to startle Trevaskis 
with such a bomb-shell. And after all, the bomb-shell had fallen as flat 
as a damaged rocket. 

But there was balm in Gilead for Searle’s ruflied feeling when, a few 
days after his resignation was sent in, the following note came from “ the 
Honorable Stuart Drummond, M.L.C., Chairman of the Directors of the 


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Colmar Mine Company,” as Searle, swelling with importance, styled him 
in telling the event to Challoner that evening : 

“Dear Mr. Trevaskis, — My nephew, Mr. V. Fitz-Gibbon, has decided that he 
would like the post of purser and storekeeper at the Colmar Mine, at least till 
Christmas. The directors and myself are satisfied that Mr. Fitz-Gibbon — who, by 
the way, is a B.Sc. of the Adelaide University — is qualified for the position. You 
are probably aware that, on coming of age, he succeeds to my late brother’s property, 
and, as his heir, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon will have a direct stake in the Colmar. We hope 
you will find it convenient to let him gain, under your skilful supervision, a practical 
insight into the working and prospects of the mine. I am, etc.” 

“ So it seems my successor isn’t to be one of those poor devils who 
are walking the streets for a job, after all,” said Searle, with ill-concealed 
triumph. 

Trevaskis made no reply. 

“A Bachelor of Science. I expect he’s well up in geology,” said 
Searle. 

‘‘Do you think so? Generally, a colonial degree means a young fel- 
low’s head has been muddled with books he never understood,” sneered 
Trevaskis as he walked away. 

“ ni give him a good dig, though, before I leave ; I’ll let him have it 
hot somehow,” thought Searle, staring after him. “ A young gentleman, 
with a fortune behind his back, with a direct stake in the Colmar ; he 
can’t bully him as he does every one else. I believe he dislikes the new 
purser more than the old one,” said Searle, with a chuckle. 

But if the surmise was correct, there was no sign of it in the man- 
ager’s manner when Victor reached the mine by the mail-coach which 
ran daily between Colmar and Nilpeena. 

“ I’m afraid you won’t find this a very entertaining place,” said Tre- 
vaskis, as the two were on their way to dinner at the Colmar Arms. 

“ Oh, I think I’ll like it, for a few months, at any rate ; the country is 
so unlike anything I’ve been in before,” answered Victor, glancing around. 

“Oh, yes, there’s novelty in more than the landscape here,” said 
Trevaskis, with a short laugh. 

He found a malicious satisfaction in anticipating the novelty of a hos- 
telry like the Colmar Arms for the young gentleman who had come to 
such a hole from caprice. 

Mrs. West, the landlady, was still waiting for a cook. He^baby was 
still getting his teeth, a process that seems to color one’s views of life 
as darkly as losing them. 

“ It’s always like this ; that wretched kid hardly ever shuts up,” said 
Trevaskis, as the mother and child disappeared, the latter keeping up an 
easy sing-song sort of wail, that swelled threateningly if he were too 
long neglected, 


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“ Poor little beggar ! He wants a little more nursing than he gets, I 
expect,” answered Victor; and when the two returned, he called out 
cheerily to the culprit, holding out his watch as a bait. 

“ I say, little one, would you like to see a tick-tick ?” 

The child looked hard at the watch and then into the two men’s 
faces. After making this preliminary inquiry into their character, he 
seemed rather to approve of them. He gave a feeble smile, and then he 
slowly and gravely walked up to the new-comer, making a wide circuit 
round Trevaskis, looking at him in the meanwhile with a gloomy, inter- 
rogative expression which greatly tickled Victor. He piled some sofa- 
cushions on a chair, and placed the child on them beside him, and gave 
him his watch to wind up. It was a robust, silver stem-winder, and 
after listening to its creaking sound for some minutes, as he turned the 
stem round, the child began to watch what went on at the table, and 
then stretched out his chubby hands for a share. 

When the mother next entered the room, she found Dicky munching 
a slice of bread-and-butter, and trying to keep up a conversation with 
his new friend. 

‘‘Your baby is a long way ahead of me in language, Mrs. West,” said 
Victor. “ What can be the meaning of a ‘ bid dod in the bat wad ’ ? ” 

“ He is trying to tell you that there is a big dog in the back yard,” 
answered the mother. Seeing that Fitz-Gibbon was much amused on 
hearing this translation, she recalled a few more of Dicky’s speeches 
equally estranged from the common tongues of humanity. Presently 
the landlady was deep in a detailed account of her trials with domestic 
servants. 

“ Why don’t you get middle-aged women, who wouldn’t be likely to 
marry?” said Victor sympathetically, after listening to a heart-breaking 
account of successive cooks and housemaids who had been obtained at 
h\gh wages with passage-money paid, but whose career at the Colmar 
Arms came abruptly to an end with the catastrophe of a brief wooing 
and a speedy wedding — even of clandestine departures without a wed- 
ding at all. 

“ Oh, bless you, sir, if they was that old as they was likely to die of 
their years, they’d marry at the Colmar. You see, a hatter’s life is a 
very lonesome one — I mean one as lives to hisself. When you go 
among the miners’ huts and tents, you see some closed up, with a pad- 
lock on the door — that’s an ’atter’s place. West, my ’usband, he was 
cornin’ along with you from Nilpeena, and he heard as you was the new 
purser. ‘But what a young swell like that is cornin’ ’ere for,’ sez 
he—” 

“ But I’m not in the least a swell ; I could rough it far more than I’ll 
have to do here,” said Victor, a little chagrined that his rough suit of 
1 


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navy-blue serge, his blue-striped shirt, with an unstarched turn-down 
collar, and his soft gray hat did not save him from the imputation. 

“ Indeed, sir, swell and all, you’re a kind-’earted young gentleman ! 
To see the way as that crabby child took to you ! An’ though I’m ’is 
mother, I know he aia’t sweet-tempered ; but what can you expect, sir, 
with three double-teeth — one above, and the others in the lower jaw ?” 

“Lays himself out to be popular, that’s evidently his tack,” thought 
Trevaskis as he listened. As for being depressed by the crudeness of 
his social surroundings, they all seemed to strike Fitz-Gibbon as so many 
points of interest. He laughed more than once on the way back to the 
mine, recalling Mrs. West’s despair at the craze her domestics took for 
matrimony as soon as they reached the Colmar. 

“That’s the place of one of the hatters who will be on the look-out 
for the new cook,” he said, as they passed a little one-roomed hut with 
a big padlock on the door. “ By the way, captain, shan’t I be a hatter, 
too ?” he added. 

Trevaskis explained that there was a manager’s residence on the north 
side of the reef, now let to some family, in which the purser had a bed- 
room. As they drew near the purser’s oflSce, Searle came to the door. 
Trevaskis had taken Victor down into the mine, etc., before dinner-time, 
so that he and the ex-purser had as yet hardly exchanged any words. 
The little man was eager to assert himself. 

“ I should like to stay a few days, if possible, to explain the books 
and that to you, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, but I am afraid my time — ” 

“ Oh ! don’t trouble yourself, Searle. After all, it is a very simple 
matter. Just to keep the time-book, pay the men on Saturday, and see 
that a propeivaccount is kept of the consumption of stores,” said Tre- 
vaskis contemptuously. 

Searle colored deeply, and Victor hastened to say, 

“ It may be very simple when it’s done by an expert like Mr. Searle, 
captain, but it’s different for me. I know I shall be a bit of a duffer at 
keeping the books at first. If you could stay a few days, I should be 
awfully glad,” he said, addressing Searle, who expanded under this 
speech like a bud in the sunshine. He would try. He thought, per- 
haps, he could manage to stay two or three days longer, if Mr. Fitz-Gib- 
bon thought it would be a help to him. 

“ The greatest in the world. I know how very well you have done 
your work ; I heard of you in my uncle’s office,” said Victor, who had, 
indeed, heard Searle’s work highly commended, and was glad to pro- 
claim the fact so as to atone for Trevaskis’s brusquerie. 

“ Soft sawder. An Irishman all over !” thought the manager, as he 
strode away, leaving the two together. 

Surely none of the duties of a mine purser were forgotten that after- 


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99 


noon by Mr. Searle. There was the day-book, in which things bought 
and sold were kept ; the cash-book, showing receipts and expenditure ; 
the invoice-book, the cost-book, the ledger, and the time-book. It was 
over the latter that Searle took his most spread-eagle flights, impressing 
on Victor the profound importance of entering each man’s time and 
avocation correctly from shift-bosses’ records. Underground there were 
the able-bodied miners, the shovellers, the truckers, the rock-drill fore- 
men, the rock-drill laborers, the air-winch boys; above ground, the 
engineer, the engine-drivers, the stokers, the battery-feeders, the pan- 
men, the hands at the stone-crackers, etc., nearly all at different wages. 
Sometimes a man would be engaged as a shoveller half of his shift, and 
as a trucker the other half. Care must be taken that he was entered at 
the two rates of wages, etc., etc., etc. 

At last Victor declared that his head was ringing, and that he began 
to suspect it was as difficult to be a good purser as it was to be a great 
poet. It made him low-spirited to look at the immaculate figures and 
copperplate writing in that pile of books, of which he greatly feared he 
would make a howling mess. Searle was radiant, and administered fit- 
ting consolation. Then the two went to have a look round the mine, 
and Searle, of course, made straight for the iron passage, and detailed its 
marvellous history, sparing no detail as to its length or cost, or the num- 
ber of sheets of galvanized iron in it. Then he made such mysterious 
allusions to Webster’s history, that Victor begged him to relate the 
story, which Searle promised to do before he left. Finally, after the 
two had tea together at the Colmar Arms, and a bottle of Bass’s ale, 
and a game or two at billiards, he insisted on making up a bed for him- 
self on the bunk that was in the oflSce, and then went across to Stone- 
house, to introduce the new purser to Mr. and Mrs. Challoner. And 
there, in the room facing the reef, Victor wrote his first letter to Miss 
Paget — one which would reach her a few days after she landed in 
Colombo. 

“You know,” he wrote, “how I came prepared to ‘hump my bluey,’ 
metaphorically speaking. Well, as far as that goes, my coming to the 
mine is up to this an Al swindle — a sham as complete as the little 
Arabian birds you bought at Aden. Figure to yourself that you are 
peeping into my bedroom. Let me assure you that there is not the 
slightest impropriety in the suggestion, for it is a very pearl of bed- 
rooms — in a stone house ! with a Kurdistan rug before the bed ! ! an- 
other before the wash-hand stand ! ! ! a third before the toilette-table, 
made up in pink and white, like a young lady going to a ball ! ! ! ! pil- 
lows with ruffles round them, on the outside of a knitted counter- 
pane ! ! ! ! ! I had better not use up all my store of exclamation points 
in this one letter, for I foresee I may need a few more later on. I had 


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some thoughts of concealing some of these details from you, for it is 
rather galling to come away to the heart of the barren Salt-bush country 
to the ‘ diggings,’ and find one’s self in a room overflowing with volup- 
tuous splendor. I could put up with the rugs and the ruffles and the 
lady in pink and white — now don’t be suspicious (vide top of the page) 
— and even with the cake of almond soap I found in the soap-dish when 
I went to put my great square piece of plebeian yellow soap into it ; but 
what do you say to long, white muslin curtains to the window !!!!!! But 
this is upholstery. I must come to actual people. And first, one of my 
college chums, Maurice Gumming, is within fifteen miles of the mine. 
He and a brother have a little sheep-run — at least it used to be a sheep- 
run, but the rabbits are eating them out. As to the manager — it is eti- 
quette to call him captain on the mine — if you were not preternaturally 
English, Helen, and me so fearfully Irish at times, I should tell you 
that when I first saw him I had a Presentiment — with a capital letter, as 
you may notice. When he is not on guard, there is a hard, angry look 
in his eyes. At all times his manners resemble the snakes in Ireland ; 
but he has lost all his money, and has had to come away from his wife 
and children. Wouldn’t I be savage, too, if I had to leave my wife?” etc. 


CHAPTER XIH. 

It was not till the evening before he left that Searle gave up the last 
insignia of his office. 

“ What ! more keys, Searle !” cried Victor. “ Good heavens ! how 
many am I to have in all? This makes seven, nine, thirteen — and two 
more, fifteen. What is this long, bright one for? It has no label ?” 

“ That is the second key of the strong safe in which the gold is kept,” 
answered Searle, slowly. ‘‘ On the last cleaning-up day, just three days 
before you came, we put two bars of gold into it, each worth one thou- 
sand five hundred pounds and a few shillings.” 

“Then there are three thousand pounds’ worth of gold in that safe 
now ?” said Victor, regarding it with curious interest. 

It was a massive fire-proof safe, standing in the northeast corner of 
the purser’s office, opposite the door which opened into the assay-room, 
containing several furnaces and a large collection of chemicals in jars 
and bottles. 

“ Yes, and when there’s about another three thousand pounds’ worth 
in it, Wills, our mounted trooper, will take the lot in an iron box into 
Nilpeena by the mail-coach, and there he is met by a trooper from town. 


THE SILENT SEA 101 

You keep this key, the manager has the other, so you can neither of you 
open the safe alone.” 

“Have you ever had any attempt at robbery here?” 

“ Well, not by any outsider,” said Searle with a mysterious air. 

“ Oh, come ! this begins to be like a chapter in a shilling shocker,” 
said Victor, smiling. But Searle maintained a very grave aspect. 

“ It is a part of Webster’s story, the strangest affair I ever was mixed 
up with. And do you know, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, it’s come across my mind 
once or twice that perhaps I had better not tell you.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because it seemed to me that after I told it to Dunning, the late 
manager — a splendid fellow, clever and well-educated, and such a pleas- 
ant-mannered man — a greater contrast to the present captain you could 
not see — ” 

“ You’re not in love with Trevaskis?” 

“ Nor he with me ; but before I leave to-morrow I’ll give him a little 
punch in the ribs.” Searle’s cheeks grew red with anger and wounded 
vanity. 

“But what were you going to say — that after you told Dunning?” 

“ He never seemed the same man, somehow.” 

Though Victor had during the last three days been often amused at 
the solemn importance with which Searle would dwell on matters of 
small consequence, he began to perceive that there must be something 
tragical underlying this story. 

“You can’t expect me to let you off telling it after raising my curi- 
osity to such a pitch,” he said. “ There’s just an hour before we go to 
tea. You must come to the Colmar Arms with me, as it is your last 
evening. Can you tell it in an hour ?” 

As the story which Searle told is closely bound up with succeeding 
events at the Colmar Mine, it is necessary to give the substance of his 
narrative, leaving out the devious wanderings in which he indulged, 
especially in the earlier portion, when he gave an elaborate account of 
the way in which one of his eyes was affected with a cataract that at 
last obliged him to go under an operation in town, where he remained 
for nearly six months before he could return to his duties as purser. 
Webster had been manager at the mine for five months before Searle 
left. During his absence no regular purser was appointed. 

“There was a man who went by the name of Oxford Jim at the wind- 
ing-engine a few weeks before I left — I have heard that he’s somewhere 
prospecting about here now,” said Searle ; “ and Webster took him on 
to keep the books and so on while I was away. When I left, the mine 
was never more prosperous, and Webster was giving immense satisfac- 
tion all round. He was a great one for experiments. Before I left he 


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had heaps of tools and machinery removed to the cave room. He got 
on well with the men, and everything was as cheerful as possible. 
When I got back and first saw Webster, I could hardly believe my 
eyes.” 

‘‘ Had he altered much, then ?” 

“That’s hardly the word for it; he was like another man entirely. 
He used to be rather plump and fresh-colored ; now his face was gray, 
with deep lines round his eyes, and a sort of quick twitch about them 
sometimes, and fearfully restless — always on the move, especially at night. 
It was a very rainy season when I got back, and Webster used to wear 
a big black cloak, and a hat slouched over his face. In these he was 
seen by people at all hours of the night, hanging round the mine, and 
some said as if he were carrying things. He had loads of some old tail- 
ings carted into the cave-ground room. The yield from the mine had 
fallen almost to nothing while I was away, and we thought this was work- 
ing on the manager’s mind, and that he was trying to get gold in some 
way or another to make up the deficiency.” 

“But a solitary man couldn’t extract gold from tailings?” 

“Not very well without special machinery. Some said he did it only 
for a blind. At any rate, he used to be hours and hours in the cave 
room at night ; and when I got back the iron passage was half done. 
He bought up second-hand iron from little mines and companies that 
had come to grief in the district; and though he said the passage would 
do to store things in, he had it put up entirely at his own cost. He said 
it was a little fad of his own, and he wouldn’t put the company to any 
expense. Well, after I came back things began to look up again. Ox- 
ford Jim went away. The morning he left he said to me, ‘ Be careful 
about what you drink with the captain on cleaning-up days.’ When I 
asked him what he meant, he just laughed and went away. He was a 
queer fellow, with a curious twist in his mind that gave him a very bad 
opinion of everything in this world, and I may say in the next. He 
used to take opium and things; people did say he was hardly ever 
quite straight the days he used to help the captain in cleaning up the 
gold.” 

“ Is cleaning up the gold a long job ?” 

“ Here the whole process, down to smelting, takes about a day, some- 
times a little longer. Your first experience will come off in nine or ten 
days. Webster and I always had something to drink together. Well, 
the second time we cleaned up, after I got back I felt rather stupefied. 
Next morning, when I saw the quantity of amalgam, I was simply thun- 
derstruck; it was about half less than it ought to have been. Time 
after time the same thing happened, and Webster seemed to be getting 
queerer. He was brother-in-law to two of the directors, and had a good 


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103 


deal of influence, else I think he could not have carried on such a strange 
game so long.” 

“ I wonder you didn’t draw up a report or clear or something. It 
must have been deucedly uncomfortable.” 

“It was more than uncomfortable; but you know, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, 
I’m not as young as I was, and I like things (^uiet; I’m afraid, too, 
Webster buttered me over a good deal. Still, in less than four months 
after I came back, the worry and fidget of it all brought on a weak- 
ness of my eyes, and I had to go away for two months. The mine had 
fallen off so much then that Webster took no one on as purser; and as 
it seemed that the Colmar would perhaps have to be given up altogether, 
the directors made no objection. 

“ Well, when I came back the second time there were the most curious 
rumors about an extraordinarily rich lode, which had been opened up and 
went six or seven ounces to the ton. But there was hardly a soul in 
the mine that I knew ; the engineer and shift -bosses, all except Boby, 
were new. As for the miners, of course they’re always shifting about, 
except a few old hands who have their families here. The yield had 
improved, and Webster spoke of resigning. He had a claim at Hoop- 
er’s Luck, nine miles from here, at which he had a couple of men work- 
ing on tribute, and he said the prospects were splendid.” 

“ Surely it was rather irregular for a manager to have a private job 
on hand while he was working for the company ?” 

“ Oh, as for that, nothing can be more irregular than mining compa- 
nies from beginning to end,” answered Searle, who had been in some 
way or another interested in mining for many years, and could speak 
with more authority on this subject than on any other. “ A man who 
can’t earn his tucker in any other line calls himself a mining expert. 
He goes into the heart of the Bush, and makes assays and reports ; and 
a company gets floated with directors that know no more of mining 
than I do of Hebrew. And there’s no doubt that in some ways Web- 
ster was a very good manager, and a captain who has knowledge, and is 
believed to be honest, can do anything with any company.” 

Some one at this moment came into the assay-room, but neither 
Searle, who was absorbed in talking, nor Victor, who impatiently await- 
ed the denouement of the narrative, took any notice. The assay-room 
was at the southern end of the offices, and the outer door often stood 
open until the oflfices were locked for the evening. It was Trevaskis 
who had come in and stood behind the half-open door leading into the 
purser’s office, looking for some chemical among the rows of bottles that 
were ranged on shelves behind the door. While thus engaged his atten- 
tion was riveted by what he overheard : 

“ At any rate, Webster had this claim at Hooper’s Luck, and he was 


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always riding across to it, and always got very much excited when he 
began talking of it. He had bought an American wagon and a pair of 
horses, and he was buying up a lot of the old machinery that was about 
the mine — old furnaces and crucibles and so on. 

“ ‘ I’ll have a good many loads to cart to Hooper’s Luck when I go 
there,^ he would say, chuckling and rubbing his hands, and then he 
would walk about, and his eyes would begin to gleam. It used to come 
across me that his mind was getting affected. One curious change that 
had come over him was that he had become most awfully miserly. An 
old friend of his that I met in town the second time I was there about 
my eyes told me that Webster’s father had become a perfect miser in 
his old age. A real miser, mind you, a monomaniac who lived alone and 
grudged himself proper food while he had great strong-boxes full of gold 
and silver, and fifty-pound notes sewn into his old coats. One day when 
I was out shooting and had left my key of the safe with Webster — ” 

“ Oh, it isn’t imperative on the purser, then, never to give up his key ?” 
said Victor, who had been gradually absorbing the thought that it was 
part of a mine-purser’s duty to see that the manager did not commit 
theft. 

“ Oh, no ; we’ve often given each other charge of our keys when w^e 
were going away for a day or so. Once the gold is smelted and stamped 
and weighed, there’s no chance of playing tricks with it. It’s the white 
gold, as the Chinese call amalgam, that gets stolen by every one in turn, 
from the manager to the pan-man.” 

“Damn the fellow’s impudence!” thought Trevaskis, and he felt in- 
clined to give Searle a piece of his mind there and then for making so 
free with his superiors. But certain vague hints which had reached him 
regarding Webster, of late, made him curious to hear the upshot. He 
stood at the shelves with his hand on the bottle he was in search of, so 
that if any one appeared at either of the half-open doors, he might hurry 
away with the chemical without betraying that he had played the part 
of an eavesdropper. 

“ Well, I came back after dusk earlier than I expected. I found the 
safe unlocked and the gold gone. You might have knocked me down 
with a feather, as the saying is. I instantly went through to the man- 
ager’s office. The doors were kept open then, from one room to another, 
so that you could go through without going outside ; and there are du- 
plicate keys for the manager and purser, but the doors were hardly ever 
locked. However, when I got to the room next the manager’s office the 
door was locked, but when he heard my voice he opened at once. ‘ Ah !’ 
he said, ‘ you missed the gold ; it is here, it is quite safe ; but aren’t they 
beauties, aren’t they real beauties, shining solid and yellow ? The more 
there is of it in a heap the lovelier it looks I Sovereigns are pretty to 


I^HE SILENT SEA 


lOo 


look at, but wbat are they compared to ingots weighing three hundred 
ounces ?’ 

“ The bars of gold were lying on the table, and he had scattered 
handfuls of sovereigns over them, and he kept on bending over them 
and handling them, his eyes glittering as if he were in high fever. 
‘ Think of getting gold enough,’ he said, ‘ to make fifteen of these bars 
— fifteen ! think of it, piled one upon the other in a splendid glittering- 
mass ! Bah ! when I make my pile at Hooper’s Luck, I won’t sell it — 
not till I have a little mountain, not till I have enough to make fifteen 
bars weighing each three hundred ounces. Good God ! think of having 
a whole ton of gold, clean and pure, before you.’ 

“He must have gone out of his mind ; yes, he must have been mad. 
That evening I found it hard to calm him down. All of a sudden he 
cried out the men at Hooper’s Luck were robbing him. He was sure of 
it. But he would take them unawares, and search their tents and find a 
heap, a heap, a heap of nugget gold! He had put them on the claim, 
and paid them wages and given them tools, and now they were cheating 
him. He knew it. But he would steal a march on them, and I’m afraid 
he did it, too,” said Searle, dropping his voice. 

Trevaskis was surprised to find himself breathing hard with rising 
excitement. His imagination was strangely fired by thoughts of those 
gleaming heaps of gold which had been conjured up by the distempered 
ravings of his predecessor. 

“ It was two nights after that,” said Searle, with a certain tremor in his 
voice, “ that I was coming very late, early I should say, from* the Colmar 
Arms. I kept a little more to the left than I ought to have done, and 
struck the stable instead of passing between it and the offices on my way 
across the reef to Stonehouse. The stable-door was open, and there was 
Nick, the manager’s black horse, in a lather of sweat and quivering all 
over. Next day news reached the mine that Hooper’s Luck had been 
robbed and one of the men killed. His mate had got a lift in Mr. Chal- 
loner’s buggy from Hooper’s Luck to Nilpeena, and it was good for the 
digger he had such a trustworthy witness to answer for him. For at the 
inquest he admitted that he and the murdered man were concealing the 
fact that they had got about two thousand pounds’ worth of nuggets, and 
that they had planned to clear with the gold for Melbourne in a day or 
two.” 

“ And the murderer, was he discovered s” asked Victor in a low 
voice. 

“ No, but if my suspicions are right, the hand of God was heavy on 
him,” answered Searle. “ I kept on thinking of what the manager had 
said of stealing a march on the tributers, and of his horse in a lather of 
sweat between one and two in the morning, and the murdered man, and 


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the stolen gold, and one thing or another, so that when I saw him I used 
to feel choked, and couldn’t look him in the face. But there wasn’t a 
breath of outside suspicion against him. I knew many a man has been 
hung on circumstantial evidence stronger than I possessed, and yet was 
proved innocent when it was too late. I would have resigned, but 
Webster was going as soon as they could get one in his place. And he 
was more than ever in the cave room — always, I think, part of the 
night. 

“Every one began to notice something very queer in his manner. At 
last one night, nine days after the murder, I was sitting here at this desk, 
making up the approximate cost; the door of the assay oflSce was on the 
latch, as it generally was till I left for the night. It was thrown open as 
if by a whirlwind, and Webster rushed into the office here, his face as 
white as a sheet, his eyes starting out of his head, the sweat in big drops 
on his forehead. ‘ I saw him,’ he said, ‘ I saw him, I saw him with his 
head all battered in, as sure as God is in heaven !’ and with that he fell 
into a fit, foaming at the mouth. When he came to, he was so com- 
pletely off his head that Wills, the police trooper, had to handcuff him 
and watch him till he got him down into the asylum.” 

“And he is there now, isn’t he? I heard something of his going in- 
sane, from the mine secretary in town,” said Victor, “ but not a whisper 
of anything else.” 

Trevaskis, who had listened to the close with breathless interest, was in 
the act of turning away with the bottle of nitrate of mercury, for which 
he had come, when again Searle’s speech arrested him. 

“ That is the first act, and the second was nearly as strange. No, you 
wouldn’t be likely to hear any whisper of the Hooper’s Luck affair — 
for Dunning and I were the only two who knew ; I told him in the 
greatest confidence. I would have told it to the new captain, too, for in 
a way I thought he ought to know, but — ” 

Then came a few words which Trevaskis did not hear. Searle was 
lighting his pipe as he spoke. But he heard Victor laughing, and a dull, 
dark red mounted into Trevaskis’s face at the sound. 

“ I may teach you to laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, before 
I’ve done with you, young man,” was the thought that rose in his mind, 
but more as an expression of quick anger than any serious resolution of 
revenge. 

“ And you,” continued Searle, “ will be none the worse for having 
your eyes and ears open. For more than seven months after Dunning 
came, I didn’t say a word about the Hooper’s Luck affair. I did go into 
the cave room with him one day, to have a search round. But there 
wasn’t a thing in the place except old machinery and all sorts of odds 
and ends, down to an invalid-chair that one of the early managers had 


THE SILENT SEA 


107 

after breaking his leg. Then one night I told him, and the whole affair 
made the strongest impression on him. I fancy he began to prowl round 
in the cave room from that very night. He said to me one day, half 
joking, ‘ What would you say if I discovered a great lode in that old cave 
room?’ and I just told him, in the same way, not to begin to fossick in 
that place at any price. 

“ It was about six weeks later, I think, that Webster was discharged 
as being sane. We heard nothing of it till he came. He made straight 
for the mine. He got into Nilpeena by the train that reaches it at four 
o’clock in the morning, and tramped it here on foot, so that no one 
should know he was coming. There was a tremendous dust-storm on. 
You couldn’t see from one end of the offices to the other. I was com- 
ing across after the three-o’clock shift had gone to work. Near the 
, assay office here I met a man bareheaded, his face as black as a pot, noth- 
ing white but the white of his eyes, and they were glaring like a wild-cat 
that has a dog’s teeth in its throat. 

“ ‘ He has turned me out !’ he said ; ‘ he won’t let me into the passage 
or the old cave room.’ 

“ At that moment Dunning came out of his office and locked the door. 
Webster gave a howl like a dingo, and rushed on him. If I hadn’t been 
there, I think it would have gone hard with Dunning. It was as much 
as we could do to hold him down till Wills got him handcuffed. He 
was worse than the first time, all the way down to Adelaide, so Wills 
told me. ... It gave Dunning a nasty turn.” 

Trevaskis heard footsteps approaching the outer door of the assay- 
room, and noiselessly slipped out, carrying away with him the nitrate of 
mercury. He had been in the room for about a quarter of an hour, and 
when he came out the wind had risen, and the dust was thick in the air. 
Looking eastward from the front of the offices, the great, wide, treeless 
plain, sweeping to the verge of the vague horizon, was enclosed in a lurid, 
reddish haze. The country in that direction was in places entirely des- 
titute even of salt-bush, and the hard, red earth lay gaping in wide cracks, 
which in a dry season, when the wind blew high, infected all the atmos- 
phere with their own sombre stain. 

“ I don’t wonder Webster went mad — living in a place like this for 
two years,” thought Trevaskis, with a dull sinking of the heart. The 
reddish, sultry air, thick with dust, throbbing with the din of the battery 
and air-compressors, the smoke from the tall stack hanging in dense 
clouds overhead — all combined to make the atmosphere dark, heavy, and 
oppressive. To Trevaskis, who from time to time found himself stricken 
with attacks of acute depression that bordered on physical prostration, 
the place just then wore a menacing and almost infernal aspect. 

He was still standing at his office door, looking blankly round with a 


108 


THE silent sea 


sort of dazed impassiveness, when Victor and Searle approached him in 
eager conversation. 

“ I suppose, captain — ” began Searle as he drew near. But before he 
could get any further, Trevaskis deliberately turned away, walked into 
his office, and slammed the door behind him. 

Victor colored to the roots of his hair. 

“ Never mind — I can have a look at it from the outside,” he said 
hurriedly. He had been so much interested by what he had heard 
regarding the cave room that he wished to see it there and then. It 
struck him that there might be some indications which would throw 
light on the strange fascination the place had possessed for successive 
managers. 

Searle had at once proposed that they should ask the captain for the 
key that opened the door leading from his office into the passage ; and 
this was the result. Searle was voluble as to the captain’s unprecedented 
rudeness, but Victor, resenting it still more deeply, would not discuss it. 

After all, no man would indulge in such an extraordinary freak 
without some strong motive,” he said, as they walked down by the side 
of the passage till they reached the irregular, half-circular iron structure 
that enclosed the opening into the singular underground retreat. 

“ Or without being mad,” answered Searle. “ That was the conclusion 
Dunning came to after the most careful examination. But he, too, got 
quite fond of it for a work-shop ; there’s a heap of his things down there. 
As I was telling you, the shock of Webster’s attack seemed to affect 
Dunning most strongly. The first thing that did him good was a visit 
from an old friend of his, an actor who was out of a billet, and came 
from Melbourne and stayed over a month with^him. Then just before 
he was killed his health was out of sorts ; he was afraid of some inward 
growth, and he had arranged with the directors that he should go once 
a month for a few days to Melbourne to be treated by some specialist. 
He was going to start the very day after he was killed — had everything 
ready. The directors thought themselves lucky to get hold of Trevaskis 
in his place, but — ” 

Victor discouraged reversion to this subject. Searle, however, had 
his innings when he bade the captain good-by. 

‘‘Well, I suppose you’re not sorry to go,” said Trevaskis in a non- 
chalant voice. 

“ In some ways I am,” answered Searle. “ The company have always 
treated me well ; I’m not like the man who said, 

“ ‘ First I was a master, 

Then I was a grieve; 

At last I got the dogs to keep, 

And then I got my leave.’ 


THE SILENT SEA 


109 


But then, again, Fm glad that the company have sent a young gentle- 
man of good position with an interest in the mine ; there have been 
some curious tricks in connection with it before, and — ” 

Searle’s heart failed him a little as he met the furious glare that came 
into the captain’s eyes ; so he cut his sentence short, and it was not till 
he was on the box-seat of the mail-coach bowling along to Nilpeena at 
the rate of ten miles an hour that he thoroughly enjoyed the “dig” he 
had given the new captain. 


CHAPTER Xiy. 

Victor did not find that the manager developed more companionable 
qualities as the days went on. There is, doubtless, often a great satis- 
faction to the unregenerate man in taking change out of an offender by 
what Searle called giving a “ dig,” especially when the one who gives it 
is going beyond the reach of an inept pleasantry in return. The amaze- 
ment which Fitz-Gibbon’s voluntary sojourn at such a place as the Colmar 
caused Trevaskis was changed by Searle’s parting words into a fast sus- 
picion that he had, by reason of his large interest in the mine, come to 
play the spy on the new manager. Thus to the moroseness which his 
misfortunes and rankling sense of failure had induced was added the 
animus of a private grudge. 

The result of this was not, however, at first bad for Victor ; it bad 
merely the result of making him work rather hard. During the first 
week he made several clerical slips, which Trevaskis commented on 
with so much severity and rudeness that it was with much difficulty 
the young man kept his temper. 

“Good heavens ! how the animal sets my teeth on edge !” he said, and 
then he resolved that he would never give him the chance again. 

For the next two weeks he worked late and early, mastering all the 
details of his work, making out lists of the stores on hand, so that he 
should not forget to order in time. As for the variations in the men’s 
wages, he learned them off by heart, in order that he should make no 
errors in writing out their weekly checks. After this spurt of work 
was over, Trevaskis set him to take stock of all the mining materials in 
the various store-rooms. 

In this he had the assistance of Michael the water-carter. The mine 
was dependent for drinking water, as indeed were all the inhabitants of 
Colmar as well, on the government tank, half-way between the mine 
and the township. 


110 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ And very bad it do be getting, that same tahnk, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon. 
The dhry season is powerful bad for the tahnks ; you gets down to ahl 
the mud and shlime and dead things.’’ 

They were in the ironmongery store, Michael calling over shovels, 
sieves, coils of fuse, picks, leather belting, kegs of nails, etc., Victor 
checking them off in his stock-book. After an hour and a half of this, 
Victor cried out, ‘‘Smoke oh !” and the two were talking as they spelled. 
Michael was a nervous-looking little man, with a brick-red face, keen, 
little brown eyes, and very red hair. As he talked, quick, spasmodic 
twitches would from time to time pass over his face, especially round the 
mouth and eyes and across the nose. 

“ But, surely to goodness, Michael, you have no dead things in the 
tank out of which our drinking-water comes !” cried Victor, with a 
touch of dismay in his voice. 

“ Indade, sor, and there is, an’ mahny’s the time I’ve had to hould 
me nose while I’m taking a draught of wather. It isn’t so bad as that 
this saison yet, and the government they do be puttin’ off cleaning the 
tahnk. We’ll have a spreadin’ illness, the typhy faver or some such, 
and then we’ll be forced to keep a docthor to our own cheek.” 

“ By the way, Michael, what sort of a doctor is the man you subscribe 
so much a month for ?” 

“Well, sor, he’s a big, fat mahn, wid half the alphabet at his heels, 
living on the other side of Hooper’s Luck. Iviry month there’s a shil- 
ling stopped out of our wages, as you know, to give him, for living 
beyand the reach of ahny rale disthress, I may say. We did just as 
well when he wasn’t there, and we died quietly, widout the help of 
medicine, if the hour had come. Mahny a time I do be wondering, sor, 
how mankind will come and shtay in a place like this, and from all parts 
of the worrld. There’s Runaway Hans — a mahn that used to go on 
whan voyage from Chiny to the Pyreamaids, where I am tould the corps 
of holy cats — the blissid saints forgive them ! — and of moighty monarchs 
is kept as on the day they died, maybe shortly after the Flood ; and yet 
that mahn left his kit and his Sunday breeches and three months’ wage, 
to run away to the Colmar.” 

“ Runaway Hans !” repeated Victor, who was smiling broadly, and by 
this time decided that Michael was one to be cultivated ; “ ah ! that’s the 
yellow-haired young man with a strong German accent ?” 

“Yes, the same; he do thry to spake English a little, but what he 
mostly talks is, as you say, sor, the German ahccent. Well, and he left 
all that behind him, and ran away for what? To scrape dirt under- 
ground till his guernsey pours over wid sweat like a rag soaked in the 
washtub, and live undher a sthrip o’ calico wid an oneasy perished 
branch o’ sandal-tree to keep the hate out — which it don’t.” 


THE SILENT SEA 


111 


Victor laughed ; and at that moment Trevaskis looked in at the open 
door. His face darkened as he took in the frank, friendly relations which 
the young man had so quickly established between himself and Michael 
— the veriest drudge at the mine. Trevaskis’s own manner to all who 
were under him was marked by a certain peremptory roughness, which 
is, as a rule, the note of the proletariat who has developed into the 
master. In his most genial moments he would never dream of entering 
into any talk with one like Michael beyond giving him orders, and per- 
haps occasionally blaspheming his eyes for not being more prompt. 

‘‘That’s his lay — to worm himself into the confidence of every one, 
and that old fox Drummond asking me to let him have an insight into 
the working of the mine. But I’ll put a spoke in his wheel there !” 
thought Trevaskis, as he strode away after giving his orders. 

“ Barzilla Jenkins is going off by the afternoon mail. I want you to 
make out his check, Fitz-Gibbon.” 

When Victor went into the office he found Jenkins, a big, brawny 
Cornishman, standing at the door as he had come up out of the mine — 
his face and hands black, his moleskin trousers stiff with clay and earth 
stains. 

“You are at the rock drills, I think?” said Victor, turning up the 
time-book. 

The man gave a muflied sort of assent. The men were paid each 
Saturday ; this was Friday, but Jenkins was entered only for two shifts. 

“Why, you are only down for two shifts, besides to-day’s, since last 
pay-day, Jenkins!” said Victor, as he began to write out the check: 
“ three days, at nine shillings a day.” 

As he looked up, to hand this to Jenkins, he was struck with the look 
of profound gloom in his face. There were suspicious light smears on his 
cheeks, too. 

“ It’s just the inikity o’ the oud Adam ’isself,” he burst out passion- 
ately. “I missed two days’ work, bein’ on the drink, and now I’ve 
not enough to take me hum ; and when I coom up this afternoon, I 
found this ’ere.” 

As he spoke, he handed Victor a telegram, which ran : ‘iYour wife is 
much worse. Come at once.” 

“I ’ad a letter last week, as she was onwell,” he went on, “and I 
knowed some’ow last night she were weered. I oft a’gone before. I 
might be sartin doctor’s troode would do ’er no good.” 

By this time Victor had produced his private check-book, and was 
rapidly writing out a check for five pounds. 

“Take this, ’Zilla,” he said, putting it folded into his hand. “You 
can pay me back when it is convenient,” he added, anxious to cut short 
the man’s broken expressions of gratitude. 


112 


THE SILENT SEA 


It was the personal relations into which he came with the miners that 
gave the strongest element of interest to the purser’s work. Victor had 
strongly the sympathetic fibre, which is rarely absent from the Irish 
temperament when it has fair play. He had also that quick sense of 
humor which, under all circumstances, gives an enlivening strain to the 
serio-comedy of life. And at the Colmar, as in all other parts of the 
Australian Bush, there was a great deal of human nature about. It is 
true that most of it was quite in the rough ; that there was little of 
those finely spun hypocrisies, those keen but veiled rivalries, those subtle 
and contradictory nuances of character, which are developed among 
superior people, under the high pressure of civilization. Those politely 
ironical little stories that invigorate the languors of conversation, at the 
expense of mutual friends, were as unknown as the faculties sharpened 
only to invent means of killing time. But though there were no polished 
raconteurs ripely skilled in relating events which never happened, in a 
sparkling way, there was no lack of men who enjoyed hearing and telling 
such stories as came in their way in a somewhat Rabelaisian fashion. 

At the Colmar, as in politer walks of life, those whose social instincts 
were most highly developed were not, as a rule, among the more admira- 
ble characters. They belonged rather to the habitual procession of the 
streets, with the chronic idlers left out, greedy for enjoyment in some 
form, and reckless as to the future. They alternated hard work with 
“betting drinks to the crowd,” and going twenty-four hours without 
sleep. They preferred to give a fillip to one day at the expense of an- 
other, rather than have all days alike monotonous. Speed with an equiv- 
ocal result fascinated them more than the undeviating pace of safety. 
Some of the older miners were Cornish Wesleyans, who combined to 
hold “services” on Sunday, to get up teetotal entertainments, and gen- 
erally influence the laxer brethren to adopt a more decorous mode of 
life. But early in his experience as a purser, it occurred to Victor that 
the miners would be a much duller lot than they were if the more serious 
among them had it all their own way. It is indeed a melancholy reflec- 
tion that the good qualities of some people are aesthetically oftentimes 
more unsatisfactory, at least to the mere looker-on, than the less virtuous 
qualities of others. 

’Zilla Jenkins was one who hovered between the two camps — some- 
times severely virtuous in his conduct, and rigid in his condemnation of 
all carnal indulgence. During such periods he was a total abstainer, and 
had even been known to give rousing addresses on the evils of intem- 
perance. But these were adventures in the higher ethics, which time 
after time ended in disaster. “ Brother ’Zilla hev backslid again” was 
the testimony that had often to be given regarding him at the chapel 
and blue-ribbon meetings. 


THE SILENT SEA 


113 


Two of these more serious miners interviewed Victor on Saturday 
after Jenkins had left by the mail-coach. 

“ About ’Zilla, sir ; we does wish as you ’adn’t a-beed so kind to ’e,” 
the elder said in an expostulatory tone. 

“You see, it’s like this, sir,” struck in the other man, before Victor, 
who was amused and a little taken aback, could make any response. 
“Jenkins hev gone back agin an’ agin to rowl like the swine in the 
Scripther in the slime o’ evil-doin’. ’Zilla gets sorry, but the repentance 
don’t stick to ’e. Now, we was a-watchin’ for this ’ere oppertoonity. 
’Zilla’s been bad on the burst. News comes as ’is missus is hill, she’s 
gen’ally hill — that’s ’ow she can’t leave ’er mother to cleave onto ’er man, 
which is the rule o’ Gord and o’ nature, but she’s got weerd and weerd, 
and ’Zilla he wants awful to git away ; but he spent ’is money at the 
public-’ouse an’ so did those as ’e goes wi’ there. Why, sir, they’re on 
the tick and on the borrowr from one month’s end to the other. We 
was waitin’ to the larst moment, an’ then to come forrard and say : ‘ ’Ere, 
’Zilla Jenkins, your missus is maybe i’ the last gapse. ’Tis a gashly thing 
for a man to s waller ’is money an’ make a beast o’ ’isself onto the bargain, 
and then not ’ave enough to take ’im to his wife’s berriii’ maybe — ’ ” 

“ You were going to say ail that to the poor fellow, when he was in 
such a fix 1” said Victor, keeping a serious face with some difficulty. 
“ Well, I’m glad I gave him what he needed — ” 

“ Ay, sir, but ’ow much better to slang ’e now than let ’e go straight 
to Berlzebub. We was goin’ to lend ’im the money at ’s awn ’count 
on a Hi Ho TJ, an’ that ’ud ’ave ’elped to bring ’e back to the paths o’ 
righteousness, so to speak, for ’e’d a-been ashamed to spend ’is sub- 
stance at th’ Colmar Harms till ’e’d a-paid us back, an’ by that time 
we’d ’ave ’ad a sartin grip o’ ’e — ” 

A teamster came into the oflSce just then, to tell Victor that four 
teams were waiting at the weigh-bridge to have their loads checked, so 
that he had to leave before Rehoboam Hosking had quite finished. 

Rehoboam, or Roby, as he was usually called, was one of the three 
shift-bosses of the mine, and the one who most frequently conducted 
services in the little iron school-room which stood mid-way between the 
Colmar Arms and the post and telegraph oflice. He had what some of 
the miners called “ a great gift for spouting,” and was fervid in organ- 
izing meetings of all sorts, in which he took a leading part. On Sun- 
days he often preached morning and evening. His sermons and exhor- 
tations were of a very rousing, not to say over-bold, description. 

Thus, on one occasion when be was carried away by his zeal for con- 
versions, he cried out in stentorian tones : “ Descend upon us, O Holy 
Ghost, descend : if there’s any damage done to the roof, there’s not a 
shoveller on the Colmar that won’t give a bob for repairs.” 

8 


114 


THE SILENT SEA 


One or two Episcopalians who were present afterwards accused Roby 
of blasphemy. He denied the charge with great vigor, and affirmed 
that they and the Church they belonged to were “ lukewarm Ladoshians, 
that the Amen of the beginning of creation had long ago spued out of 
His mouth.” This was a flight in metaphor wffiich reduced one of Roby’s 
opponents to silence, while it confirmed the other in his worst opinions 
of the shift-boss’s divinity, and even of his moral sincerity. Hence- 
forth this Episcopalian believed all that was said against Roby, for there 
were unfortunately stories abroad about him that somewhat told against 
his influence as a social reformer. In preaching, he was fond of de- 
scribing himself as a brand snatched from the burning, and with that 
complete deliverance from reserve and modesty which so curiously marks 
the members of some religious sects, he would give graphic details of 
the ways in which aforetime he had distinguished himself in evil doings. 
At teetotal meetings, also, he would relate with gusto how at one period 
of his history he had been such a slave to drink that his first wife had 
died from the effects of destitution and misery. 

‘‘ But at the same time ’e don’t tell ’ow, when he was a local preacher 
and class-leader at the burrar, ’e prilled samples o’ copper ore, and ’elped 
to start a little bogus company,” an old acquaintance of Roby’s would 
say, and another would recall an equally discreditable story. Were they 
all true? Whether or no, the man was a very “stirring” pulpiteer and 
blue-ribbonner. No new-comer was long at the Colmar without being 
importuned by Roby to give some assistance at the Saturday night tem- 
perance meetings, which were chiefly under his direction. 

“ The Lord did not make everybody smurt,” he would explain with 
great unction, “ but I blaiv ivery one as tries can do summat for a blue 
mitting — sing a song or give a bit o’ recitation, or music on any sort o’ 
machine ’e plays.” 

And thus Victor found himself pledged to Roby, to play a violin solo 
on the evening of each Saturday from the first week he came to the 
mine. Now it was four o’clock in the afternoon. The last of the men 
had been paid, and Victor had the office to himself. He took out his 
violin, tuned it, and began to play over the “ Last Rose of Summer ” 
with variations. He had not played more than a minute or two, how- 
ever, before he put the violin down with a little exclamation. The last 
time he had played this melody was at a concert on board the Moguls 
accompanying Helen on the piano. The first few bars recalled the place 
and scene with the vividness which belongs to the associations of music, 
and with these Victor recalled that he had not finished reading her let- 
ter which had come by that morning’s mail, posted the day after she 
and her father had reached Colombo. He had been interrupted in read- 
ing it ; then he had gone to dinner ; then he had paid the men ; then 


THE SILENT SEA 


115 


he had gone to the weigh-bridge ; and then — he had forgotten it. He 
admitted this to himself with a pang of self-reproach. It was not new 
to him, this discovery that his thoughts and actions often fell below his 
own ideal of what a lover should be. 

And it was such a bright, amusing letter, the people on board so capi- 
tally hit off, and the landing in Colombo ; the drive among the swarm- 
ing native quarters, where you see the craftsmen in their tiny shops 
without door or windows, the coarse screens of split bamboos rolled up ; 
here a blacksmith sitting cross-legged beside his anvil, there an enamel- 
worker, then a brazier’s shop full of glowing copper vessels, the richer 
shops with tinsel-covered skull-caps, with soft white silks and muslins, 
petticoats and trousers for women, with spangles, and gold, and embroid- 
ery ; the soft-faced bronze babies, arrayed in tiny loin-cloths and heavy 
bangles, toddling after the Sahibs, to sell them a big scarlet flower ; the 
traders, with a single basket of mangoes and a small branch of bananas, 
under a cocoa-nut palm by the roadside ; the Hindoos with their caste- 
mark on forehead and chest sitting sideways on bullocks ; the big, funny 
vehicles with a pagoda roof ; the little bamboo carts, drawn by tiny 
humped oxen that run as fast as ponies ; the yellow-robed Mollahs under 
yellow umbrellas ; the people who run after belated travellers with palm 
fans and screens of coarse bamboos, and great pineapples for three- 
pence, and iced soda-water under the scorching sun. All was just as 
it had been on that day when they went through the place together. 

But what I like best to see are the natives of high caste in volumi- 
nous folds of pure white and majestic turbans,” wrote Miss Paget ; 

their unmoved calm, their statuesque attitudes, their imperturbable 
mouths, make one feel that, as compared with Orientals, Europeans 
have, on the whole, degenerated into comis voyageursP 

“ What would Helen think of our miners ?” thought Victor with a 
smile. 

Then he turned to the letter again, and looked over it from beginning 
to end, while some feeling of loneliness, he could not have defined, over- 
came him. Was it because existence at the Colmar, like a Chinese pict- 
ure without shading or perspective, had begun to pall on him, or was 
it that the discipline under which Miss Paget purposely kept her feelings 
left a void that, with the roofless sort of sensation which had begun to 
creep over him, struck him with a feeling akin to physical chill ? Only 
just on the last half-sheet, after the close of the long letter, in a sort of 
unoflBcial postscript, came a few tender words : 

“ I think I have told you almost everything, except that I often felt sad at the 
thought of sailing, sailing, sailing farther away from you every day. I am at this 
moment in a charming room at the Mount Lavinia Hotel, where father’s friend is 
established. They are both on a balcony somewhere, talking about classic odes. 


116 


THE SILENT SEA 


When I look out of the window, I see that lovely stretch of bright yellow sand, and 
the sea of an unfathomable blueness dying away on the beach. When I look through 
the doorway, with its khus-khus screen half drawn up, there is a vista of polished 
floor and white-robed natives with bare feet gliding noiselessly about. Still, I am 
rather sad, because you are not here. Dites moi quelque chose de tendre qui me fasse 
ouhlier ces tristes pensSes'' 

“ Dear Helen ! I must write her quite an epistle to-morrow,” said 
Victor to himself, after reading these lines many times over. 

Then he went outside and stood looking westward across the mine, 
with its groups of low iron buildings, the long engine-room in the cen- 
tre, with its reverberating throb of machinery, the heavy folds of smoke 
rising above it, and hanging low over the adjacent groups of the miners’ 
huts and tents, and beyond the little township, with its small iron build- 
ings equally bare, without the sign of a tree, or even a fence, to break 
the dull, dead level. For the first time the austere, inexpressible aridity 
of the country seemed to weigh on him. It was now many months 
sinde a shower of rain had fallen in the district. The gray-green salt- 
bush was frayed and thickly coated with dust, the bare earth showing 
between the low bushes in baked gaps. Was there any other spot of 
the earth more desolate than this ? — flat, parched, and gray, without 
shade or water, lying in measureless vistas, with an atmosphere so pure 
and clear, and a sky so cloudless and widely vaulted, that frequently the 
mirage we call the horizon was entirely absent? For how many hun- 
dreds of years had the sun beaten remorselessly upon the thirsty waste? 
As he looked at it, an immense longing came over Victor to see once 
more the deep, dull green of hills densely covered with stringy bark, or 
to see autumn leaves whirling yellow and red before a high wind, under 
a threatening sky. 

“ Well, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, are you admiring the western view ?” said 
some one close behind him. 

‘‘ Yes ; admiring it all so intensely that it has given me a fit of the 
blue devils,” said Victor, as he shook hands with Challoner, whom he 
had not seen for some days. 

“ You’ve been working too hard since you came here. My wife said 
only last night you’ve never been at Stonehouse in the day-time, though 
you have been sleeping there for over four weeks. You come away at 
daylight.” 

“Not before six, my dear sir. Don’t make me out stupider than I 
am. I ride for an hour or so, then breakfast at the Colmar Arms at 
eight, and at half past or nine I am in the office. Up to this, it has 
taken me eight or nine hours to do what Searle used to get through in 
five.” 

“ Well, you know, Rome was not built in a day. I came across to 


THE SILENT SEA 


117 


steal a little keg of blastitig-powder, but as you are aboutj 1 suppose TJ 
better borrow it; and then just lock your office and come back with me 
to Stonehouse.” 

“ Thank you ; I’ll come with pleasure,” returned Victor ; and after 
he had got the keg of powder for Challoner, the two went across the 
reef to Stonehouse. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Victor had several times before this spent an hour or so with the 
Challoners, but always in the evening, between eight and ten o’clock. 
On these occasions he had become acquainted with all the occupants of 
the house but one : the host and hostess ; Euphemia, the host’s stout, 
rosy-cheeked daughter, placid and silent, and much given to blushing ; 
Shung-Loo, who had learned the secret of swift and noiseless action ; and 
the cheerful, noisy Irish general servant, whose good intentions were far 
in excess of her performances. He had heard Miss Lindsay named 
from time to time, and building a theory on some of those inferences, 
too vague to be called thoughts, concluded she was a middle-aged lady, 
probably something of an invalid. His intercourse with Mr. and Mrs. 
Challoner had been from the first on a pleasant and friendly footing. 
They had invited him to spend his Sundays at Stonehouse any time he 
felt inclined. But hitherto he had spent them with the chum he men- 
tioned in his first letter to Miss Paget, at Wynans, the rabbit-infested 
station. 

On this afternoon he chatted with Mr. and Mrs. Challoner for some 
time, and then went into his own room to write. As he was going 
there, Mrs. Challoner told him that if he felt inclined to sit on the 
western veranda at any time, he would always find a comfortable chair 
there. After writing several pages to Miss Paget he availed himself of 
this invitation. Taking a book and a cigar with him, he went round to 
the western veranda. The curtains were all drawn. Before his eyes 
had- grown used- to the semi-gloom, he heard a sound that startled him 
strangely. It was the sound of one sobbing in bitter grief. A young 
girl, in an arm-chair, at the open French window, her face buried in her 
hands, was within a few paces of him. She had not heard his approach, 
and he tried to steal away without attracting her attention. But he 
could not for a moment withdraw his eyes from the slenderly rounded, 
graceful figure, from the exquisite head, with its wealth of deep amber 
hair, bent low in an abandonment of sorrow. And thus trying to do two 


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things at a time — a performance against which we have all at one time 
or another been warned — he stumbled heavily over a chair. 

Doris, hastily wiping away her tears, looked up. Their eyes met. 

“ I am awfully sorry,” began Victor, and then he stood, coloring 
deeply, unable to take his eyes off the face upturned to him, to look 
away from those wonderful eyes, radiant even in their sorrow. 

Doris got up as if to go inside. There was a little wicker table by 
the chair on which she had been sitting, covered with crayons and water- 
color sketches. She began to gather them up. 

“ Pray do not let me disturb you. I will go back to my room again. 
I did not know there was any one here,” said Victor, coming nearer to 
her. 

“ Oh, no, don’t go away, please,” said Doris softly. She tried to 
look at him, but the great tears were again rising in spite of her, and she 
half averted her face. 

“ I am afraid you are hurt, or in pain. I am so sorry — so very sorry 
— to see you in distress.” 

There was so much kindness and heartfelt sympathy in his voice that 
Doris felt constrained to make some response. 

“ You must think I am very foolish.” 

“ Oh, no, no ! lam only sorry I cannot do something for you. I am 
afraid you have had some bad news.” 

No — not news ; there is nothing more that could happen to me,” 
she replied, speaking in a very low tone, so that her voice might not 
utterly break down. 

“ I — I did not know of your coming ; I had not heard,” said Victor ; 
and then he suddenly paused, asking himself why he made so sure that 
Shung-Loo’s mistress was an invalid, middle-aged lady ? Had any one 
ever said so ? Had any one, in fact, said anything beyond speaking of 
Miss Lindsay ? But how was one to imagine that this represented a 
beautiful young girl with an air of distinction and refinement rare any- 
where, but little less than astounding in a spot so isolated from the 
higher graces of civilization. These thoughts passed rapidly through his 
mind, ending with the reflection that he had made a most foolish and 
inept reply to the pathetic words the girl had uttered. He had, in truth, 
lost his head, and — he had better go. 

“ I am so vexed I disturbed you,” he said. “ Would you like me to 
raise the curtains before I go ?” 

“ Oh, but you must not go ; you came to read. You are Mr. Fitz- 
Gibbon, I think ; I have heard Mrs. Challoner and Euphemia speak of 
you.” It seemed to Victor a distinction conferred on him to hear his 
name spoken by that softly modulated, musical voice. There was 
something too irresistible in her direct simplicity, her clear, candid gaze. 


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I shall be only too glad to stay if I do not disturb you,” he said, 
and on that Doris resumed her seat and took up a chair-back on which 
she was outlining figures in pale and dark blue. 

Victor rolled up the curtains, and sat in the chair over which he had 
stumbled, and took up his book, but the words danced before him and 
the lines ran together. Then he perpetrated felony with his eyes. Still 
holding the book before him as if he were reading, he stole glances at 
the girl, who was sitting barely six feet away from him. She was in a 
thin black dress, relieved only with'narrow white lisse at the throat and 
wrists. She began to sew, her long, thick lashes downcast, and as he 
looked he saw a great tear roll down her cheek, and then another. He 
felt choked with compassion, yet when she had spoken of her trouble he 
had made so imbecile a reply. There was something infinitely touching 
in the grief of one so young and so much alone in the world. If he 
could only 'say something — something to distract her thoughts ! He 
rustled the leaves of his book and cleared his throat. Doris furtively 
wiped her eyes and bent a little lower over her work, and the silence re- 
mained unbroken. 

Then Shung-Loo came in his usual noiseless way with a white silk 
shawl. “ It neal sunset now, Miss Dolis.” She took the shawl from 
him with a little smile of thanks, and put it over her shoulders. “ Oh, 
Miss Dolis, you have died, you must not,” he said in an impressive 
whisper. 

No, Shung ; I am not going to again,” she said humbly. Then 
Shung-Loo disappeared as noiselessly as he had come. As soon as she 
was alone again — she felt satisfied that Mr. Fitz-Gibbon was buried in 
his book — Doris took up the corner of the shawl and held it to her lips, 
and her tears flowed afresh uncontrollably. 

“ Miss Lindsay, I ought not perhaps to speak to you when you are in 
such trouble ; but you kindly asked me to stay — and — and I cannot bear 
to see you cry.” 

Victor had put down his book and drawn his chair closer. His voice 
vibrated with emotion, and, in fact, his eyes were moist. 

Oh, I thought you were reading,” she said brokenly. Every one 
tells me I ought not to cry, and I seldom do.” 

‘‘ Would you find it very hard to tell me why you are so sorrowful? 
But don’t if it hurts you ; only — ” 

“ It is because my mother has left me. She is gone ; she can never 
come back to me.” She did not sob, but the tears were falling as fast 
as raindrops, her filmy laced handkerchief was soaked, her lips and hands 
were quivering. 

I would give the world if I could say something to comfort you,” 
said Victor, speaking little above a whisper. 


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“ But you cannot — no one can,’’ she said through her tears, vainly 
struggling for composure. 

Even in the midst of his distress, Victor felt a half inclination to 
smile at the uncompromising sincerity of this little speech. It was evi- 
dently hopeless to trot out any of the serviceable platitudes that people 
use to bridge over those depths of grief in which they have no personal 
share. Still, even to make her talk a little helped to stem the tears 
which gave him so horribly uncomfortable a sensation in the throat. 
This constrained him to make another effort. “ You know, every one 
feels badly hurt at some time,” he said lamely enough, keenly conscious, 
even as he uttered the words, that any small efficacy they may ever have 
possessed in binding up a broken spirit would be now ruthlessly weighed 
in the balance, and found wanting. 

“ Has your mother died, too ?” asked Doris, looking up with tears 
trembling on her lashes. 

“ No — oh, no ! She was quite well when she last wrote to me.” 

“Then you came away from her? You left her?” said Doris, a little 
shade of mistrust creeping into her manner. 

“ Oh, well, you know, young men nearly always do,” he explained. 

“ Don’t they love their mothers as much as girls do, then ?” asked 
Doris. She glanced up at Victor, her lips slightly parted, a look of 
dawning interest in her face, as if the incongruities of his sex were for 
the first time brought home to her. 

“ Oh, yes ; I think most of them do — only, you know, there is a dif- 
ference,” he replied, anxious, he could not say why exactly, to make her 
believe as well of his kind as possible. “ Girls, of course, mostly stay 
with their mothers till they marry — ” 

“ I would never have left my mother, never — never,” she answered 
with slow emphasis. 

“ What a pretty place this is !” he said, picking up one of the water- 
color sketches which had fallen on the ground. He felt all the absurdity 
of this abrupt change. But he wanted above all things to lead the talk 
away from dangerous topics. 

“ That is Ouranie, our old home, where I was born, and where maman 
and I always lived together,” she answered softly. 

Then she turned over the rest of her mother’s sketches and showed 
him the shadowy corner in the garden where the violets used to carpet 
the ground, and the tangled banks of Gauwari, with the tall trees grow- 
ing overhead. Doris had by a great effort recovered her composure, 
but her grief had been too suddenly arrested, and the pictures of her old 
home awoke too many tender memories ; fearful that she might again 
break down, she rose, saying, 

“ If you would like to see them, I will show you some more of mother’s 


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121 


drawings another time and then, with a grave little bow, she went 
into her own room through the open French window. 

She had been for some time that afternoon looking over these too 
well-remembered scenes, the last her mother had sketched and painted, 
till it seemed to her as if her mother were quite near. “ Oh, maman 
darling, it is sometimes so very strange without you !” she said. Then 
she had fallen asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed a dream dear and 
beautiful as the innermost circle of heaven could have been. Her mother 
came to her with the old, tender smile and words, the old, caressing 
touch. But in the moment that her heart was throbbing for exceeding 
joy, she awoke to find herself alone. In the cruel reaction, she was 
overcome with a grief keener than that of the first days of her bereave- 
ment. It was then that Victor had come. When he was left alone, he 
sat for some moments looking blankly at the sketch he had first taken 
up, and which Doris had left behind her. 

“ Well, I was a fearful jackass ! I might have known that these were 
probably the very things that made her cry so. Poor little darling ! . . . 
Well, she is little more than a child. . . . What wonderful eyes, what a 
perfect face altogether ! ... It is curious, but it seems as if I had often 
seen a face like hers in my dreams. . . . The expression is just that of 
the beautiful little Virgin in Titian’s picture of the Presentation — that 
serious, dove-like innocence.” 

These and divers other thoughts, more or less confused, passed in 
rapid succession through the young man’s mind. He looked at the 
sketch a long time, taking in all the details of the tranquil home where 
this beautiful young girl had probably lived all her life, with the mother 
she would never have left. 

“ She seemed to be a little suspicious of me because I had left my 
mother,” he reflected, smiling. If I had only known what to say ! . . . 
It must have been dreadful for the poor, dear child to lose her mother. 
... To think I have been for so many nights under the same roof with 
her, without knowing it. . . .” Then he reflected with immense chagrin 
that he had declined to spend the evening at Stonehouse because of 
’Zilla’s blue-ribbon meeting. He felt half inclined to go to Mrs. Chal- 
loner and ask her to let him come, after all, as it did not matter so 
very much about playing a stupid little melody to a lot of rowdy 
miners. 

But when he played his stupid little tune an hour later in the small 
school-room, crowded with the miners and their families, and a large 
proportion of the inhabitants of Colmar, “ Norah Creina ” was so rap- 
turously encored that he had to play again. It was a rough assembly, 
with several larrikins in the back seats who joined in the choruses when 
there were any, invented parodies on certain recitations, and called out 


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to the performers by name to cheer or depress them. This latter was 
especially the case if any one gave a reading of a didactic cast. 

‘‘ That’s hawfully dry ’ash !” one would cry out. 

“ Bnt, then, ’tis to do your immortial soul good, Jack,” another would 
respond. 

‘‘ We didn’t come ’ere because of our bloomin’ souls; we come ’ere 
to ’ave a lark,” would be shouted out if the unfortunate reader still per- 
sisted in the reading with a purpose. But no musical performer, unless 
very obnoxious to the crowd, was ever interrupted. 

“ Angkore ! angkore ! go it, young un ! you knows ’ow to handle the 
fiddle !” “ Give us another chune, Mr. Purser ! they’re worth twenty 

tractses.” On being thus adjured, Victor played from memory Bee- 
thoven’s “ Adelaide ” with variations. The melody, weighted with im- 
passioned yearning, swept him into hitherto unsuspected depths of feel- 
ing : the winds of evening in the blossom-heavy bowers, May’s silvery 
lilies-of-the-valley, streams in their leafy channels, nightingales pouring 
out their souls in ecstasy, all whispering and breathing and murmuring 
and fluting the beloved name : A — de — la — i — de 1 A — de — la — i — 
de ! 

What had given such unaccustomed skill to the young man’s finger’s ? 
what had suddenly kindled his instincts and imagination and heart with 
such swift intuition of the inner meaning of the great musician’s master- 
piece of a lover’s incommunicable rapture and sorrow ? The applause of 
the audience at the close was noisier than ever, the room more stifling. 
Victor was glad to get out under the starlit sky, cutting short Roby’s 
profuse thanks and big words about “ valyable ’elp in a good work.” 

On leaving the township, he walked back to Stonehouse by a circui- 
tous route. He approached the house by the western veranda. There 
was a light in one of the windows ; he stood looking at it for some time. 
Then, with a profound sigh, he went round to his own room, and there 
was his unfinished letter to Miss Paget staring him in the face. 

He ought to finish it to-night, so that it might be posted to-morrow, 
and reach town in time for the outgoing mail-boat. But what an age it 
took him to write a page and a half, and how stiff and fragmentary the 
close of the letter seemed on reading it over ! He decided it would be 
better not to write at all when one felt so incomprehensibly stupid. As 
he reached this conclusion, he found himself staring hard into vacancy, 
recalling the sweep of heavy golden-brown lashes wet with tears. And 
this made him ask himself the question why he had made no mention of 
an event that had interested him so deeply. He went on with a sort of 
wrathful catechism, with eloquent blanks by way of answer. He lay 
long awake that night, and the upshot of his night vigil was that, instead 
of spending part of Sunday at Stonehouse as he had thought of doing. 


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or going across to Wynans as he had half promised Maurice, he went for 
a solitary ride towards the northwest. 

After going four or five miles from the mine in this direction, the 
country became more diversified. There were numerous low reefs, 
ridged in places with dead-white, milky-looking quartz, and others with 
innumerable iron-stone “blows.’’ Water-courses, too, were much more 
frequent than in any other part of the district — water-courses with wide, 
shallow beds, filled with gravel and red dust, with broken pieces of hun- 
gry and crystalline quartz, mingled in places with fine specimens of 
glassy, six-sided prismatic crystals. The region was full of experimental 
shafts and the remains of small alluvial diggings. Challoner’s run verged 
on the western side of this auriferous tract, the boundary between being 
marked in one spot by a large broken-down whim, the massive posts 
bleached white with the fiery suns of many summers. Behind this 
whim was an abrupt blackish rock, that gave weird echoes of any sound 
that broke the silence. It was a desolate spot, speaking eloquently of 
the drought that had ravaged the district four years before. Striking 
off from this in a northerly direction, Victor rode towards Broombush 
Creek, which was four miles off. This creek took its name from being 
near its rise densely lined with that shrub. It was the largest water-course 
in the district, with wide gravelly reaches, closely neighbored by innu- 
merable little reefs and rises, with a water-worn, denuded aspect. 

“ There ought to be alluvial gold here, if anywhere,” thought Victor, 
as he struck the creek. He had heard it was seldom found without a 
lonely prospector here and there prowling in its vicinity. There was 
evidently one not far off now, for as he rode on, following the sinuous 
windings of the water-course, he saw a film of smoke ahead of him, ris- 
ing in wavering fragments till they were lost in the blue air. The sight 
gave him a feeling of pleasurable excitement. Perhaps he was going to 
come on the early beginnings of a great gold-field. As he went on, he 
noticed innumerable trenches and small pits, now partly choked up, most 
of them evidently of old date. They were on each side of the wide, 
shallow water-course, some on the face of the banks and in the bed of 
the creek. Two or three of the latter were quite recent. Near one of 
these he noticed a broken shovel. Half a mile beyond he came in sight 
of the spot from which the smoke ascended. 


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CHAPTER XVL 

It was a curious little eucampment, in the vicinity of an old well. 
Near it stood a horse in hobbles, looking around with a contemplative 
air, as if he were accustomed to a country in which it was easier to think 
than to feed. A little farther on stood what at first glance looked like 
an irregular sort of tent. It was a cart, covered with a large discolored 
tarpaulin, held down with stones at the back and sides. In front it was 
fastened back on each side of the shafts. 

Close to the cart a wood fire was smouldering. Between the fire and 
the cart an elderly man was sitting on a low three-legged stool before an 
empty deal case turned upside down. He was smoking a pipe with a 
long many-jointed stem, and dealing out a pack of cards in two heaps. 
He was under the shade of a group of sandal-wood trees on the bank of 
the creek, yet his soft felt hat was pulled so low over his eyes that as 
Victor approached he could see little of the man’s face. Neither did he 
seem to notice the sound of the horse’s hoofs. 

Victor halted within a few feet of the fire, expecting that the solitary 
smoker would look up. But he went on dealing out the cards in un- 
broken silence, so engrossed in his occupation that he seemed oblivious 
of the rider’s presence. 

“ Good-day, sir. May I come in ?” said Victor at last, riding a little 
nearer. 

The man did not start, nor show any appearance of surprise. Holding 
the cards he had in his left hand fan-wise, and pushing his hat back a 
little, he looked at his visitor. 

“You may come under such shade as there is, certainly, young man ; 
but to ask you to come in is beyond my power.” 

“ But is it agreeable to you that I should come under the shade ?” 

“ Agreeable is a comparative term.” 

“ Ah, I see, you really don’t want to be interrupted. Well, please ex- 
cuse my intrusion.” 

“ Intrusion ? Not a bit of it ! Come under the shade and have a 
pannikin of coffee. By the way, do you like coffee ?” 

“ Oh, yes, very much,” said Victor, who was really loath to go away 
without having some talk with this eccentric recluse. 

At the first glance he did not look very much unlike the ordinary 


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125 


Bush laborer. But as soon as he spoke it was evident that he belonged 
to a different class. 

“ I cannot offer you a chair,” he said, after Victor had dismounted and 
fastened his horse to one of the sandal-wood trees ; “ and I fear there is 
a slight weakness in one of the legs of this stool. But I ought to have 
a box somewhere equal to your weight.” 

He dived in under the cart and brought out an empty kerosene case, 
on which Victor seated himself, with an apology for the trouble he gave. 

“It’s no trouble at all,” returned his host. “ In fact, I should proba- 
bly not give you a seat if it involved any trouble. If you’ll excuse me 
for a few moments, I’ll finish this game with Jack.” 

“ Jack! where is he?” said Victor, looking round with surprise. 

“ He is not visible to the material eye,” answered the man gravely. 
“ He formed my acquaintance shortly after I dropped out of the ranks. 
I think he had some vague idea of setting up in the ghost business ; but 
I didn’t approve of that line, so I adopted him into the bosom of the 
family, so to speak. He plays a very good game in his own way — a 
very good game, indeed.” 

He went on smoking and dealing out the cards very slowly. It was 
apparent from the heaps already on the table, and the number still in his 
hand, that there must be two packs of cards required for the game that 
“ Jack” played. Victor watched its progress with great interest, pleased 
with the thought that he had, by chance, come in contact with one of 
those solitary men who are sometimes known in the Australian Bush as 
“ real characters.” 

“ By the Great Llama, Jack has won 1” said the player, as he faced the 
last card. 

“ I hope that does not mean you lose a great deal ?” 

“ Well, perhaps not. It just means that I may go on to Colmar to- 
morrow ; that is, Sunday. I made a bet with Jack on the subject.” 

“ Sunday ? No — to-day is Sunday.” 

“You must be mistaken.” 

“ Indeed I am not. Yesterday was Saturday — to-day is Sunday.” 

The man, with a perplexed look, counted on his fingers. 

“Monday I gave up fossicking; Tuesday I came here; Wednesday I 
went to the little shanty at Starvation Creek, where they sell grog on the 
sly ; Thursday I returned with a furious headache and a few bricks for 
the pavement of hell ; Friday I went across to see Van Diemen’s Nick ; 
and Saturday, that is, to-day, I sank an experimental trench till three 
o’clock, and broke a shovel. In face of such an alibi, how can you ex- 
plain your method of counting the days ?” 

“Perhaps you will be angry at my explanation,” said Victor, laugh- 
ing. 


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“ Anger is a moral luxury in which I have long ceased to indulge. 
Let us have your explanation.” 

“ ‘ The next time I get drunk it shall be with those who have the fear 
of God in them.’ That carries my opinion of the alibi.” " 

The man’s face slowly relaxed into a smile, and he looked at his visitor 
with some interest. 

“You young rascal!” he said, in a tone of amusement; “you think 
because you get tipsy yourself with boon companions, that a man of my 
standing indulges in the same weakness. . . . Perhaps you are right 
about the day. I suppose you’ve lived all your life in places crowded 
with the human species, where you knock every day into hours full of 
appointments with men who cheat you and women who deceive you. I 
slung up that form of being happy many years ago.” 

“ And in the meantime you lose a Sunday occasionally, and find Jack 
stealing a march on you. But do you think he won this game fairly, 
seeing that to-morrow is Monday?” said Victor, who longed to glean 
more information regarding the habits of the partner who was not visi- 
ble to the material eye. 

But the man did not at once reply. He went to the fire, and, pushing 
the smouldering sticks together till they burst into a fiame, he put a cop- 
per saucepan half full of coffee on the fire. Then he produced a second 
pannikin and handed it to Victor, nearly full of that beverage, very 
strong and of excellent fiavor. - 

“ Did you see any one at work on your way here ?” he asked, as he 
relit his pipe and resumed his seat. “ An old man, for instance, with 
a battered profile, as if people had been shying stones at him for half a 
century ?” 

“ I saw no one since I left Colmar till I came here.” 

“ What ! did you come from Colmar — from the mine ?” 

“Yes; I’m living there at present; I’m purser at the mine.” 

“The purser? By Jove 1 you don’t look much like it.” 

“ I give you my word that T can add two and two at the first shot,” 
said Victor with a smile. 

“ Oh, I don’t doubt it ! But why a young fellow like you should be 
at the Colmar bothers me. I should have thought you would at least be 
feeling pretty down on your luck, instead of which you go about with 
violet eyes and a smile that embraces all creation.” 

“ It must be your very good coffee that’s getting into my head if I 
look so benevolent.” 

“ Ah, you find the coffee good ? I’ll give you the recipe for making 
it. Get the best Arabian beans; green, mind you. Roast them till 
they are quite brown, but not black. Then take two handfuls and bruise 
them between two stones. Put that amount to two pints of water in a 


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127 


copper saucepan, and let the water come to boiling-point slowly without 
the lid. That’s the way the M’zabites of El-Aghouat made coffee when 
I lived in Sahara for some time, several years ago. But now tell me about 
the Colmar. Who is robbing that mine now for the shareholders?” 

“ No one, I hope,” answered Victor. “ Do you know much about the 
place ?” 

‘‘ I lived there six or seven months, some time ago.” 

‘‘Oh ! I wonder if you are the man Searle spoke about?” 

“ By the name of Oxford Jim ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ The same. Has Searle gone away ?” 

“ Yes ; I came in his place.” 

“And who is the manager now?” 

“ Mr. William Trevaskis.” 

“ You don’t mean that !” said the man with a start. “ William Tre- 
vaskis, eh ? The last time I had the honor of seeing him he was rolling 
to Government House in a carriage lined with violet velvet, or some- 
thing of that kind. Back to the old life, eh? Well, that is a piece of 
news !” 

“ But how is it you didn’t hear it before, living within ten miles of 
the mine ?” 

“ Because I have for the last three months been not living, but hiding, 
like the modest peony ; burrowing little shafts, turning over gravel drift 
in dry tributaries of the sandy Broombush Creek, most of the time two 
miles from here, where no man comes. Excepting Van Diemen’s Nick 
— my friend with the battered phiz — I have not spoken to a soul for 
eleven weeks, till you came to-day.” 

“ For eleven weeks entirely alone ! Why, it’s like solitary confine- 
ment !” said Victor, looking round at the eerie desolation of the great 
neutral-tinted plain, which, in the declining light of the afternoon sun, 
assumed more and more the look of a limitless ocean without sound or 
color or movement. 

“Yes — solitary confinement with hard labor thrown in. And yet 
most likely six months from this, when I am spending my nuggets, eat- 
ing the husks which the swine did eat, I shall be sorry I left the Salt- 
bush country.” 

“ Your nuggets ? Then you have found gold ?” 

“ Oh, a little more than the color,” answered Oxford Jim, with a sat- 
isfied laugh, and glancing behind him under the cart. Victor looked 
also, but all he could see were a few ordinary digger’s tools, a roughly 
constructed cradle, a shovel or two, a pick, and two rusty basins. But 
somehow the conviction grew on him that the solitary prospector had 
turned up trumps. 


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“ Yes ; a little more than the color,” he went on, still smoking. His 
pipe had a very deep bowl, and the smoke, which ascended in blue spiral 
columns, seemed to Victor to have an acrid odor, foreign to ordinary to- 
bacco. 

“ But what is gold to a man like me, an exile, an outcast, with a hate- 
ful past and no possible future ; with every chance in life exhausted, 
every avenue closed ? Some one says that each man bears his own trag- 
edy about with him. I know what mine is, well.” 

A vague look had come into the man’s eyes, but there was a sort of 
mild exaltation in his face, and notwithstanding the melancholy despair 
of his utterances, he seemed to find a certain enjoyment in giving them 
expression. 

“You are too much alone, you are morbid in consequence,” said Vic- 
tor, who was touched by the thought of the man’s dreary isolation. 

“ Morbid ! Good Lord ! what can make you as morbid as your fellow- 
creatures, when you begin to understand them ? Snakes and dingoes 
and lizards are amiable sentimentalists in comparison with the bulk of 
mankind.” 

Victor could not refrain from laughing. 

“ For my own part,” he said, “ I should like to be spared the amiable 
weakness of a carpet-snake !” 

“Oh, as for that, a carpet-snake is a harmless worm compared to 
your own kind of both sexes. He does not come to you with a smiling 
face till he gets a good opportunity to sting you. Ah, you may smile ; 
you’ll find it out for yourself one day. Now, take that man Trevaskis 
as an instance. I worked with him for a year and a half, fifteen years 
ago. He was making money fast, and had thousands of pounds invested. 
I said to him one day, ‘ I wonder why you keep on working like this 
when you have so much.’ 

“ ‘ Oh,’ he said, ‘ I made up my mind when I was quite a boy that I 
would make enough money somehow or other to live like a gentleman ; 
and I mean to do it. None of your poky, stingy little incomes, but 
something substantial and handsome.’ ” 

“ Poor old chap ! it’s rather rough on him to have lost his money, 
after all.” 

“ Yes ; but my feeling is that, on the whole, it served him right,” said 
Oxford Jirn vindictively. “ When he said that to me, I said half jok- 
ingly, ‘ Wouldn’t it be a good thing to learn to speak like a gentleman. 
Bill, before you come on the stage as a man of money and fashion ?’ He 
took up the idea quite seriously there and then. ‘ Suppose you give me 
lessons,’ he said, ‘in pronouncing and writing? I’ll pay you well for it.’ 
I didn’t want to make a money affair of the matter. Indeed, I thought 
it would drop through in a month or so. But no, he was too deter- 


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mined. I never saw a man that stuck to any plan in all my life as he 
did, once his mind was made up. Every evening during a whole year 
he worked away for hours like a nigger; and then he would get up by 
candle-light and study again, writing out pages of dictation. Of course 
we grew very chummy in that time. I used to vary my lessons, in pro- 
nouncing and spelling, by telling him of the ways of living among the 
civilized races of the earth, developing his conceptions of society, as if I 
were a sort of unedited Manual of Etiquette.” 

Here the speaker suddenly burst into laughter. 

“ If you don’t know much of the vagaries of Bush life,” he said, this 
may serve as a specimen for you. A man of fifty-five who grubs about 
in the wilds as a laboring drudge, and has lived the life of a wandering 
savage for over twenty years, can still give instruction in the social 
ethics of society.” 

He had ceased smoking, and his utterance was now a little heavy. 

“Then what was the upshot?” asked Victor. 

“ The upshot was that when I returned, after being in Africa and the 
East, some time ago, I drifted to Adelaide on my way to Blanchewater. 
Five years ago I saw Trevaskis face to face, in his role of gentleman — 
I, as usual, a poor devil in dusty clothes on the dusty highway — and — 
he cut me dead.” 

“ Surely he couldn’t have known you ?” 

“ Oh, yes, he did ; I caught his eye. Well, I believe I’ll take the 
change out of him yet. I’m at a loose end just now. I want to wait 
for an old friend of mine who is coming down from the Far North. I 
might as well stay at Colmar — better than going to town, indeed. I’ll 
most likely trundle across to-night or to-morrow. You won’t be gone 
before then ?” 

“ Oh, no. You see, I have an interest in the Colmar Mine, and — ” 

“ Oh, you have an interest in it, have you ? Then just let me tell you 
a little secret,” said the man, with a sudden gleam of excitement, over- 
coming a drowsiness which began gradually to make itself apparent in 
his voice and manner. “ Search the cave room well.” 

“ Oh, it was well searched by the late manager — ” 

“Dunning, the man who was killed, you mean. Ah, I know a little 
about the sort of search he was making. Never mind, you take my ad- 
vice. Tell Trevaskis you met an old man prospecting out at Broom- 
bush Creek, who advised you to turn over the fioor of that cave room, 
with a passage between it and the manager’s ofiSce. Don’t tell him it 
was Oxford Jim who gave the advice, and don’t let him search it alone !” 

“ Perhaps we had better have a couple of policemen to look after us 
both,” said Victor, in a jesting tone. 

“ Oh, no, you haven’t been long enough in the world, or in the gold 
9 


130 


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business, to acquire the usual morals. . . . But there is a scientific classi- 
fication of liars that I should advise you to keep in mind — the simple 
liar, the damned liar, and the mining manager,” answered the man som- 
brely. 

“ Well, good-by ! I expect Til see you again, though I should do 
better to stay in the Salt-bush country than mix with the human race,” 
he added, when Victor rose to go. 

The sun was low on the horizon as he rode back to the mine, his 
mind full of speculations regarding the lonely prospector. How had he 
come to have such a profound sentiment of the inutility of life, to be so 
penetrated with the conviction that henceforth nothing could change 
the course of his own existence, or make the world a fascinating place 
to live in? The thought that a human being could be so joyless and 
stranded, and perhaps, too, the solitary desolation of the country around 
him, gave the young man an unusual feeling of depression. But as he 
passed Stonehouse a curious glow of gladness stole over him, and his 
ride appeared to him in the light of an interesting event, one that might 
lead to the discovery of an unsuspected treasure. 

Next day he and Trevaskis were engaged together in cleaning up the 
fortnight’s yield of gold. Before the day was over, the gruff coldness 
of the manager’s manner had thawed a little. He began to suspect that 
he might be doing the purser an injustice in supposing that he had any 
motive in coming to the mine beyond that of wishing to get a little ex- 
perimental knowledge as to the working of a property in which he was 
interested. He worked so cheerfully, was so much interested in every- 
thing, sang snatches of “ Kory O’More ” and “ Kich and rare were the 
gems she wore,” and countless other songs, in such a clear, blithe voice, 
and repeated some of Mick’s stories with such an inimitable accent, that 
almost in spite of himself Trevaskis was drawn into a more genial frame 
of mind. 

I think you must have had an extra love-letter to-day, Fitz-Gibbon, 
you are in such good spirits,” he said jokingly as they were in the assay- 
room, after taking off the crucible in which the gold had been smelted. 
Victor colored consciously. He had felt like a bird on the wing all day, 
because he was to spend the evening at Stonehouse. Yes, this was all 
that had come of the stoical resolution which on Sunday had led him to 
explore the wilds so as to keep out of the way of temptation. It is one 
thing, however, to do this on a given day, and quite another to remain 
indexible during succeeding ones. 

“ Me get a love-letter ! I’m surprised at you, captain, to be putting 
such notions into my head,” he answered gravely. Trevaskis laughed 
incredulously. Then it struck Victor that this would be a good oppor- 
tunity to ask permission to search the cave room. 


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131 


“ Did you ever turn over that cave room at the end of the iron pas- 
sage ?” he asked somewhat suddenly. 

Trevaskis, who well remembered the narrative told by Searle regard- 
ing this place, replied in a somewhat strained voice, 

“ No ; I have not felt much tempted by the look of the place. A lot 
of Dunning’s things are there, and old machinery, with other odds and 
ends. Why do you ask ?” 

Because, when I was out riding yesterday, I came across an old fel- 
low prospecting all alone, who — ” 

“ Told you there was some gold hidden away there f ’ interrupted Tre- 
vaskis, with a scornful smile. 

“ Perhaps you’ve heard the yarn before 

“ Oh, I’ve never been near a mine in my life without hearing four-and- 
twenty lying rumors about it.” 

‘‘ Would you mind my fossicking over the place some day when it’s 
convenient?” 

Trevaskis’s face darkened a little, and he hesitated before replying, 

‘‘ Do you mean to dig in it ? to look for a lode, or what ?” 

“ Oh, just to make a thorough search, with Mick to help me when he 
isn’t busy, or ’Zilla Jenkins when he returns. ... I would be careful 
not to injure the place. Anything that’s in it of value — ” 

^‘Of value? I think the most precious article in it is an invalid-chair. 
One of the managers broke his leg, and used to be trundled about in it ; 
so Roby told me when I went down there with him the other day to 
look at some old machinery. ... If there are many of Dunning’s things, 
you might have them removed into one of the store-rooms.” 

“ Thank you ; that could be easily managed,” said Victor, taking this 
as a grudging consent. ‘‘ I’ll begin my search, say, on Monday next.” 

You better have ’Zilla to help when he returns ; he’ll be a handy 
man in a job of that kind,” answered Trevaskis, in a more gracious 
voice. 

But though in contact with Victor that day his suspicious mistrust of 
him had lessened, yet as soon as they parted he returned to his old 
standpoint. 

“ What should he want to go fossicking about in that place for ? Per- 
haps to make sure that the late manager’s belongings are not tampered 
with, or something of that kind,” he thought, with a sombre look in his 
face. 

It was partly the inflexibility of his mind and partly the invincible 
suspicion of his nature which made it almost impossible for him to re- 
nounce a prejudice or an evil opinion once entertained. It was charac- 
teristic, too, that the lower motives of conduct always appeared to him 
more credible than any others. 


132 


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CHAPTER XVII. 

It was after dark that evening when Trevaskis went across to the Col- 
mar Arms for his evening meal. When he came out at his office door, 
he saw Victor going across the reef towards Stonehouse. He did not 
turn up at the inn for tea, so it was evident that he was spending the 
evening with the Challoners. As the manager sat alone at the long, 
dreary table of the dreary dining-room, he fell into one of those brood- 
ing fits of utter depression which from time to time overtook him since 
coming to Colmar. 

At such times his past life would rise up before him, year by year and 
period by period, till he felt almost suffocated by despair and a bitter 
sense of the injustice of his lot. He had earned his money so hardly — 
building up his wealth without help or bequest from any one. And then, 
when he had achieved his purpose, how far removed he had been from 
plunging into reckless extravagance or speculation ! The only faults he 
could charge himself with were trusting his partner too blindly, and put- 
ting so large an amount into bank-shares, with the purpose of being 
quite safe. But now, after all his long years of toil, and those brilliant 
ones during which all his hopes were realized, he was beggared, and with 
no prospects in life that he could see beyond dragging out a death-in-life 
existence at some miserable mine, in the heart of some miserable desert. 
He had no knowledge nor training for commercial life ; all his business 
aptitude lay in one direction. He had, after coming to the mine, some 
faint hopes that enough would be saved out of the wreck of his fortune 
to enable him to start as a share-broker. But affairs had turned out 
even worse than he had anticipated. It was now certain that, in com- 
mon with other share-holders of the bank that had failed, he would have 
to pay liquidation calls on the shares he held. 

As he sat plunged in the gloomiest reflections, feeling the weight of 
his misfortunes, and his loneliness pressing upon him like a heavy, phys- 
ical load, he heard the sound of voices and loud laughter in the bar. 
Sometimes of late, when these fits of profound gloom overcame him, 
Trevaskis felt a nervous horror of returning to the solitude of his own 
rooms. He would have been ashamed to confess it openly, even to him- 
self ; but he would, in reality, have preferred to join the boisterous 
miners and stray swagmen drinking in the bar-room, rather than remain 


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133 


alone with his despairing thoughts. He had sometimes compromised 
between the two plans, by sitting for an hour or two after tea in the 
bar-parlor, where the sound of voices of noisy merriment, and occasion- 
ally the strains of a banjo, an accordion, or a fiddle, gave him a certain 
sense of companionship. The bar-parlor faced the dining-room, being 
on the opposite side of the narrow passage which divided the newer 
portion of the Colmar Arms. Trevaskis v/ent into the room on this 
evening, and found it as usual unoccupied, with a small kerosene lamp 
on the mantel-piece which diffused more odor than light. 

There was a large horse-hair sofa in the room, one end against the 
door that opened into the bar-room. Trevaskis threw himself down on 
this, with a newspaper in his hand. But he did not read it. His move 
into this room, with its staring wall-paper, its cheap, vulgar oleographs, 
its strong fumes of negro-head tobacco and coarse spirits, seemed to 
bring home to him more forcibly than before the hopeless slough into 
which his life had been resolved. He recalled, with a vividness strange 
in his experience, all the external aspects and pleasures of the years dur- 
ing which he had enjoyed the delights and luxuries of wealth. His en- 
trance into parliamentary life; the gratified sense of importance that 
came to him as his name began to figure in the daily papers — now in- 
troducing a deputation, then giving utterance to some pregnant com- 
ment regarding the mineral laws of the country, ever and anon as one 
of the guests at the more important social gatherings; at banquets to 
distinguished visitors ; at official dinners given by the governor — every 
detail had been precious to him. 

He recalled the long evenings at the clubs ; the pleasant excitement 
of hurrying from the theatre to go to an evening assembly ; the mali- 
cious rumors and surmises regarding other people’s affairs; the unex- 
pected denouements and amusing gossip which his wife never wearied of 
retailing to him — all in his present cruel isolation had an exaggerated 
interest and value. But though, like the newly enriched of other spheres 
and countries, Trevaskis had developed a marvellous affinity for luxury 
and the more material aspects of refinement, he had no resources in him- 
self. He read the newspapers, and there his reading began and ended. 
As soon as he had left the solitude of the Bush and the engrossing toil 
that had been sweetened by rapidly accumulating gain, he had taken 
with extraordinary avidity to all forms of amusement. Though he did 
not dance, he would pass hours watching people at a ball, enjoying the 
spectacle more thoroughly than most of those who took part in it. The 
music, the light, the flowers, the elegant dresses, the soft movement of 
costly fans, the fragrance of dainty perfumes — all had an irresistible at- 
traction for him. He was an habitual theatre-goer, and never missed 
an opera if he could help it. He had not the least technical knowledge 


134 


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of music, yet he would listen to a solo or a chorus with a sort of tranced 
rapture that had in it something almost hypnotic. 

Now he was exiled from all this, and, worse still, he was separated 
from his wife and children. He recalled them as he had often watched 
them in the luxurious nursery of his big, handsome house — his little fair- 
haired girls kneeling in their snowy-white night-dresses — and hot tears 
which refused to be shed dimmed his eyes. Then, crowding side by 
side with these reminiscences, came thoughts of his present surroundings 
— the mine, with its unceasing din and smoke, with the tents and hovels 
of the miners — those squalid abodes through which he passed and re- 
passed thrice a day to his meals at the dreary inn. The earth floors, 
sometimes half covered with dust-strewn sacks; the dingy little deal 
tables, heaped up with dirty dishes of tin and earthenware ; the narrow 
bunks, with heaps of soiled clothing; the empty kerosene cases, that 
served for seats ; the flapping partitions in some of the squalid interiors, 
covered with tattered newspapers ; groups of children playing at digging 
mines, everything strewn with the grime of perpetual dust — all seemed 
stamped on his brain with the sharp precision of a photograph. 

At times he would overhear the sound of women’s voices in angry 
con-tention. In such settlements as the Colmar Mine woman is seldom 
anything more than the female of the man, with an emphatic tendency 
to shriek on insuflScient grounds. Often he would meet groups of the 
miners on their way to the Colmar Arms, laughing and talking merrily. 
They had washed and changed their clothes after coming up out of the 
mine, having put in their “ shift ” of eight hours out of the twenty-four, 
at from eight to ten shillings a day. Many of them looked as if they 
had not a care in the world. Frequently he found himself envying 
them. He had left his own class — to do so had been the aim and the 
pride of his life. And yet, on this evening, after all that had come and 
gone, to sneak into a room where he could overhear men who belonged 
to his original rank in society, was the nearest approach to enjoyment 
which existence presented to him. He ground his teeth at the thought 
in a paroxysm of impotent rage, muttering half aloud, “ God in heaven ! 
is there nothing I can do to get out of this infernal hole 

He had of late been troubled with a dull aching in his head and eyes. 
To-night the latter were worse, with that acute sensation as of hot sand 
below the eyelids, which foretold an attack of sandy blight. He rose 
and turned the light low, so as to relieve the tension of his eyesight. 
Then he lay down on the couch, with his face to the wall. Some one in 
the bar-room was playing a plaintive air on a zither ; when it was ended 
there was a shout of applause, and several men spoke at once, asking 
the musician to have a drink in the various forms of invitation popular 
at the mine. 


THE SILENT SEA 


135 


Give it a name, old boy !” 

‘‘ Have one with me, Hans 1” 

“Would you like a bath, or suthin’ stiff?” 

“ Nominate your pizen, mate !” 

Trevaskis was astonished to find the voices penetrate the bar-parlor as 
distinctly as if the door were open. He went to see whether it was ajar, 
and found it was closed and bolted as usual. But the upper half, which 
was of glass, covered with a dingy cretonne curtain, had been broken 
in some recent scuffle. Hence all that passed in the bar-room was per- 
fectly audible in the little parlor. 

“ Mein Gott ! I gannot trink mid you all at once, my f rents — von at a 
dime, if you blease,” said the musician. 

“You better have a good blow-out while you can, Hans,” said one of 
the men ; “ Roby will be making a blue-ribboner of you soon — now that 
he’s got you to play at his Saturday concerts.” 

“Ach Gott, even such a goncerts is better than nodings,” answered 
Hans. “ I haf few books, and I read small English. I do not get on 
fast mid your yellow packs.” 

“And little good they are when a bloke does read ’em,” said one, in a 
tone of conviction. “ It’s allays the same sort o’ onpossible chaps and 
females, with a lot o’ rot about the sun going down, as if ’e didn’t every 
day follow out the same lines, since he first got ’i§ billet. . Now in 
my hopinion, if you gives yourself over to be a Hard, you ought to spin 
a good, stiff yarn out o’ your own ’ead. It’s laziness and not the fear o’ 
Gord as makes ’em steal old lies isstid o’ making up new ones.” 

“You’re not far wrong, sonny,” said an elderly man in an encourag- 
ing tone. “ For my own part, I’d more rather go to a gospel shop ’n 
read a novil. One puts me to sleep sooner ’n t’other.” 

“ Does Roby hold forth on Sundays as much as he used to ?” said a 
man, whose voice Trevaskis thought he recognized, though he could not 
quite identify it. 

“More so, from all I ’ears,” answered one of the miners. “As for I, 
I gives un a wide berth. Go to ’ear a effigee of a man like ’e bawling 
out what ’e felt and what ’e thought and what ’e did? Not much. Ef 
’e trampled on ’is conscience and ’is female, why can’t the bloomin’ idjit 
keep it to ’isself ? Wash your dirty linen to ’ome, say the old proverb, 
and ef your soul is dirty, wash that to ’ome too, say I.” 

“ Bray VO, Circus Bill !” said one. 

“ Go it like a good un, old chap ! Why, you could give us a stun- 
ning sermon off your own bat,” said another. 

“As for sarmings, I’d like to know what was the good of ever takin’ 
out a patent for ’em, from the beginning,” said another. “ I was one 
Sunday in town, wandering about, and I sees a place with the door open 


136 


THE SILENT SEA 


and people goin’ in. I followed ’em. There was Bibles, and hymn- 
books, and other utensils more or less religious, but not a soul said a 
word for ’arf an hour by my watch. At the end o’ that, I got nervous 
like, and I came away. Some one told me arterwards they was Quak- 
ers. If ever I jines a church it ’ll be them, where people sits quiet and 
decent, keeping holy the Sabbath day, instead of setting a silly man to 
give a lot o’ foolish jaw that no one minds.” 

There was some laughter as the speaker ended, and then a man, in a 
thick, crapulous voice, declared his conviction that all this chapel-going 
and preaching and creeds and Bibles was a made-up thing to keep peo- 
ple from enjoying themselves over some liquor. 

Some one remonstrated, saying in a reflective tone that in the old days 
“ the ’eathen rubbed ile into the karkiss of Christians, and put a lucifer- 
match to them — and yet they went on spreadin’.” 

“And then what sort of enjoyment is it?” said another, who spoke 
with a strong Scotch accent ; “ pouring a lot of raw speerits down your 
throat till you’re a beast, and then sleeping till you wake up a poor, sick 
creature, with a conscience like the undying worm.” 

“ Ach Himmel ! dat is von way to trink,” said the German. “ Bud 
in mein gountry it vas not so. There two kameraden will sit for a 
whole day and night, making joy and singing over their schoppen. In 
Ausdralia if von trink doo mooch id is de teufel ; bud if von trink doo 
mooch in de Vaterland, id is yoost right.” 

At this juncture the company in the bar was joined by a stranger. 

“I’m blowed if it isn’t Yan Diemen’s Nick I” said the landlord. 

“ Holloa, Nick, have you turned up too, old man ?” said the voice 
which Trevaskis half recognized. 

“You here, Oxford Jim?” cried the new-comer in a tone of surprise. 
“ Why, I thought you was far away, looking for the color of gold among 
limestone ridges somewheres.” 

“ No, mate, I’m here instead. I’m going to take up a new line : write 
epitaphs, irrespective of the character of the deceased, for bereaved fam- 
ilies, or something of that sort. I got kind of tired of regions red with 
black men’s blood and stained with white men’s crimes.” 

“ That be damned for a yarn ! You haven’t been much beyond Broom- 
bush Creek all the time. Now, West, you look sharp, and give me a 
grown man’s dose of your best three-star brandy, dark,” said Yan Die- 
men’s Nick, in an authoritative voice. 

The landlord, who was seldom sober after dark, broke into a string of 
lurid adjectives, winding up with the request, 

“ Pay me the three pound ten you owe me first !” 

“ I don’t owe you a sanguinary copper, not a farden, and you knows 
it, you cheatin’ ole vagabond !” shouted Nick. 


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137 


There was a scuffle amid loud exclamations ; Trevaskis blew out the 
lamp which was on the mantel-piece, and, standing by the door that led 
into the bar, lifted a corner of the cretonne curtain to watch the pro- 
ceedings. West had jumped over the bar and seized Nick by the shoul- 
ders. They were separated by those who stood nearest them ; the land- 
lady, half crying now, stood behind the bar, imploring her husband not 
to make another row. 

“ Come, come, Nick ! don’t spoil good comradeship in this way,” said 
the man who was known as Oxford Jim, speaking in the half-ironical 
tone habitual to him. 

Trevaskis, on catching sight of him, at once recognized his old in- 
structor in the arts of spelling and correct pronunciation. 

“ I don’t want to spoil no good comradeship, but I command this var- 
mint of a man to give me the refreshment I order. He’s bound by his 
license to shelter man and beast, and give nourishment when it’s ast for.” 

“I won’t do neither till you pay me; and you’ve come without a cop- 
per to blesh yourself, as usual. I know you — you old penniless tramp !” 
shouted West. 

“ I’m an old penniless tramp, am I ?” retorted Nick. ‘‘ Well, now, 
I’ll just give you a lesson !” 

He disengaged himself from Oxford Jim as he spoke, and thrust his 
right hand under the soiled blue woollen jumper he wore. 

“Oh, hold ’im ! hold ’im !” shrieked the landlady; “he’s got fire- 
arms ; don’t you see them a-bulging out all round of ’im ?” 

The landlord retreated behind the bar, and opening a small door which 
communicated with the back premises of the inn, called out, “’Arry, 
’Arry, ’Arry !” in thick, stentorian tones. 

A draggled and scared-looking maid-servant appeared at the door. 

“ I want the ostler !” roared the landlord. “ Tell him to go at once 
for Wills, the police-trooper. This very instant, mind ! Tell him there’s 
a harrest to be made.” 

Trevaskis, standing in the darkness, holding back a small portion of 
the curtain, watched Nick’s proceedings with growing interest. He saw 
him take a long, thick-looking package, wrapped up in a red cotton 
handkerchief, from underneath his blue jumper. 

“ Have you got the police-trooper handy. West ?” he cried in a shrill 
voice that had in it a strange note of triumph. 

The landlord, backing away a little while his wife passed in front of 
him, watched the man’s proceedings with undisguised alarm. 

“You’d better play none of your revolver pranks ’ere, or, as sure as 
your name is old Nick — ” 

“ Call the trooper, I say ! Let him bring his revolver. You allays 
gives people in charge that has stuff like this.” 


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He was untying one end of the irregular-shaped parcel as he spoke. 
All eyes were fastened on him. Slowly he unfolded the soiled red cot- 
ton handkerchief. 

“That’s the sort of thing that gets a bloke into the ^ tin Maria’ in 
this part of the world, ain’t it, mates ?” he cried, his voice almost rising 
into a yell of triumph as he flung a large piece of heavy metal on the 
bar. It fell with a dull thud, and lay where it fell with a deep, dull 
yellow glitter. 

“ By the Lord in heaven, it’s all pure gold !” cried one of the men 
nearest the bar, in a tone of incredulous wonder, taking up the nugget. It 
passed from hand to hand, while the bar-room became full of confused and 
broken murmurs. The landlord stood looking on, eyes wide open, mouth 
agape, when Nick turned to him with a violent imprecation, crying, 

“Now, perhaps, you’ll give me what I ast you for?” 

West carried out the order as to the dose of three-star brandy with- 
out a single comment. Where had Nick been prospecting? Was there 
much gold? Was this all? How far away from the Colmar Mine? 
Did any one else know of his And ? To all of which Nick returned no 
answer, beyond smiling blandly and putting his forefinger significantly 
against his nose. 

“ This weighs over seventy ounces,” said the landlord, when he had at 
last got possession of the nugget, holding it as he spoke in the palms of 
his two hands. 

“ So this h what you were up to, Nick, when you were lying low and 
keeping dark all these weeks ! It was rather hard to put me off the 
scent, though, and let me waste the sweetness of my old age among 
these billabong courses behind the — ” 

“ Don’t let the cat out of the bag, Jim !” cried Nick. “ I’ll give you 
a nugget or two, old bloke, and some horiginal promoters’ shares in my 
new company.” 

“ Thank you, Nick, thank you kindly,” answered Oxford Jim. “ Why, 
man, this nugget alone will enable you to sit on a post and swill beer 
among the aristocracy of Colmar for a year to come !” 

“Do you think I’ve got no better idea than that of enjoying myself?” 
said Nick indignantly. “ Ah, you’re allays makin’ game of a chap, and 
I think you’re a little jealous, after all ! You said you was getting 
the color of gold where you stayed so many weeks behind Broombush 
Creek.” 

“Broombush Creek — Broombush Creek!” The name passed from 
one to the other ; one or two made a motion towards the door, as if they 
would set out for the place there and then. 

But Nick took no notice. He kept his eyes fixed on Jim as he said, 
in a dogged tone, 


THE SILENT SEA I39 

“ Come, man, let’s see the color you got. Show it to us ! This is 
not my only nugget ; IVe plenty more where this came from I” 

As Nick spoke he put down three more nuggets on the bar. The 
men around began to look at him with a new expression on their faces. 
He was a small, lean man, with a flat, battered sort of face, who had led 
a flat, battered sort of life from his first entrance into the world. He 
had been for years prowling about in auriferous districts, chiefly because 
he had a rooted dislike to steady work. He ran up scores in the inns 
and stores that would give him credit, and then disputed the validity of 
the claims. His face and hands were perennially stained with earth ; no 
one had ever seen him in clean clothes. The one solace of his existence 
had hitherto been to obtain a bottle of strong drink, and lose all thought 
and capacity of action in those strange bouts of absence from consciousness 
which we term drunkenness. And now, in the midst of the base and sor- 
did accidents which made up the record of his years, this strange thing 
happened to him. Alone in the arid desert, grubbing in the dirt, he 
had accidentally come upon a certain heavy, glittering metal, more pre- 
cious to the majority of his kind than the loftiest achievements of hu- 
man genius, the progress of science, or the perfection of holiness. Nick 
enjoyed the unusual importance of being looked at without pity or con- 
tempt. Added to this, the old brown brandy, of which he had imbibed 
what he called a grown man’s dose,” increased his feeling of importance. 
As he watched the crowd of men in the bar-room pressing round his 
nuggets, he turned once more to Oxford Jim. 

‘‘ Show us the color you got, Jim, do 1” 

‘‘ Well, I don’t mind if I do, since you are so pressing,” answered the 
man thus addressed, as he rose to leave the bar. 

He came towards the door leading into the bar-parlor, in which Tre- 
vaskis stood absorbed in listening to and observing all that passed. But 
before Jim reached the door the landlord interposed eagerly, 

“ Come this way, mate — it’s the nearest way to your room.” 

As Jim disappeared through the door behind the bar. West said in an 
exultant voice, 

I bet you a drink all round this chap’s got somethin’ worth lookin’ 
at. He come here early this mornin’ with a tumble-down little one-’orse 
cart, and an ’orse as you could count ’is ribs arf a mile away ; and he 
carries two or three swags into ’is room, and locks it most careful behind 
’im when he goes out.” 

No one made any reply to this; all eyes were fixed on the door 
through which Jim had disappeared. A curious silence had fallen on 
the noisy crowd. Each one believed, without knowing exactly why, that 
the man who had accepted Nick’s challenge with an air so self-contained 
and unboastful had something to show worth looking at. 


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In a few minutes he reappeared, carrying a bundle folded up in a blue 
blanket in his arms. A low murmur broke from the lookers-on. 

Jim stood by the counter and unstrapped his bundle. The men 
pressed round him like a swarm of bees. Trevaskis, secure in the dark- 
ness of his retreat and the absorbed excitement of all the men, stood 
close to the door, looking on with rising emotion. 

“ There, that’s one bit of color, Nick !” said Oxford Jim, holding up 
a great nugget of gold that weighed nearly a hundred ounces. 

There was a hushed, breathless silence for a brief space, and then a 
wild shout went up, and there was soon a babel of distracting cries. 

“ Hip, hip, hooray 1 our fortune’s made !” 

“ You wasn’t working far apart, you two !” 

“ Mein Gott, it vas drue all de times. I vas begin to tink Ausdralie 
vas like other goundries, where von vork hard for liddle pay and no 
bleasures. But now I see it mid mein own eyes. . . • A man can get a 
gread lump of gold down in the dirts widout no governments !” said the 
German. 

“ There’s plenty more gold where these nuggets were found. They’re 
the biggest ever seen in the Colony. Here’s news for you, Ben, here’s 
news for you !” cried one to a new-comer who entered at that moment. 

He was a correspondent for one of the daily newspapers in town, and 
no sooner had he seen the nuggets and heard the tale of their discovery, 
and heard that the lucky diggers had been working in the vicinity of 
Broombush Creek, than he rushed off to the telegraph-office to endeavor 
to send a late message to town. 

“ There will be a great rush in no time ; and we’ll all be off to the 
diggings. Hurrah, hurrah for the new diggings !” 

The cry was taken up on every side. When the tumult had a little 
subsided, Oxford Jim said, in a tone of quiet conviction. 

Well, now, you fellows who are miners at the Colmar Mine, you’d 
better buy up the old cave room and search it well. You’ll find it a 
better spec than going off to the new diggings, I can tell you !” 

There was a roar of laughter at this; but Trevaskis, whose blood 
seemed to be on fire at sight of the gold, and who knew Oxford Jim well 
enough of old to feel sure he did not speak in jest, stole out of the bar- 
parlor unseen and unobserved, resolved that he would on this very night 
see for himself whether there was any truth in his words. 


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CHAPTER XYIIL 

When TrevasMs left the Colmar Arms, his intention was to go at 
once into the cave room and make a vigorous search without a moment’s 
loss of time. On reaching the mine he found it was nearly eleven o’clock. 
According to his usual habit, he went across to the mouth of the shaft, 
and saw the night-shift go below. 

This was composed of thirty miners in all. To a man they were 
greatly excited by the news, which had already spread, of the pure nug- 
gets exhibited in the bar-room by two diggers who had been prospecting 
not far from the mine. 

“ I got gold gravel there myself two year ago, out of which I made a 
ten-pun note,” said one man, not given to boasting or idle speech. 

Ten of the men there and then gave notice of their intention to leave 
at the end of two days — the shortest notice which they could give with- 
out forfeiting wages. 

“ If I were wise, I’d throw up my billet here, and make for Broom- 
bush Creek before the rush sets in,” thought Trevaskis, as he recalled 
some of his past experiences at newly found alluvial diggings. Various 
schemes flitted before his mind. One was to ride across at daylight to 
Broombiish Creek, and make an examination of the vicinity for himself. 

With his long experience and practical knowledge of gold diggings, 
there might be a certain fortune for him in that place, if he pegged out 
a good claim and telegraphed to the directors of the Colmar Mine to 
accept his resignation from the earliest possible moment. He was so 
engrossed with these plans that, when he went into the cave room and 
looked around at its huddled confusion, his flrst impulse was to leave it 
without wasting any time on such a wild-goose chase. 

The excavation was at its highest from nine to ten feet in height. The 
roof sloped away irregularly, extending on the north or reef side in a 
sort of low, wide passage a little over three feet in height. The floor in 
the main body of the place was littered with old mine tools and disused 
machinery. Only the middle part was kept clear. Here there was a 
space of ten feet by twelve, covered with a square of linoleum. In the 
centre stood a small deal table, a canvas-back lounging-chair, a stool, etc. 
Close to the table there was a large shoe-trunk, on which were placed two 
or three old cases with empty and half-empty bottles, containing various 


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chemicals, such as nitric and sulphuric acid, mercury, borax, and carbonate 
of soda. There were, besides, strips of buckskin, canvas, and chamois 
leather. At a little distance from this space, and near the entrance, 
stood a bunk with a narrow paillasse and one or two rugs over it. Close 
to it stood the invalid-chair, covered with dust. 

Trevaskis placed the lantern he had brought on the small deal table, 
and turned over the contents of these cases. The last he examined con- 
tained the usual solvents for gold, and all that was necessary for assay- 
ing it by cupellation. He was familiar with the way in which some 
men became infatuated in the matter of experimenting with gold and 
with the minerals that contain it. He perceived that some of the pre- 
vious managers of the mine had been bitten with this mania. Webster, 
probably, in particular, the man who was now in the lunatic asylum, 
constantly raving about the three hundredweight of gold which had at 
one time been in his possession. All this would be more than sufficient 
to account for the stories An circulation as to the treasures of the cave 
room. 

As this thought passed through Trevaskis’s mind, he glanced round at 
the piles of discarded or worn-out machinery, elliptical sheet-iron buck- 
ets, broken hand-pumps, a little champion rock-drill with the cylinder 
smashed, a double-ended boring hammer, a few roll-picks, long-handled 
shovels, claying-bars, etc., etc. Then he looked with some attention at 
the two furnaces close to the western side. He found they were fixed 
in a strong and workman-like manner. As he was examining these, he 
noticed a* water-tap in the wall hard by. This tap was very stiff, but 
after some pressure he succeeded in turning it, and water poured out. 
So, then, it was connected by a line of underground pipes with the tank 
at the end of the offices, which was supplied with water from the main 
tank of Colmar. 

It suddenly struck Trevaskis that a tremendous amount of ingenuity 
and labor had been expended on this place in one way or another. 
Could it all have been the freak of a man who was going mad ? “I 
don’t believe it,” he said to himself half aloud. 

Then, for the first time, Trevaskis became convinced that some person 
or persons had carried on experiments to a singular extent in this place. 
This conviction made him begin to search in a methodical and careful 
manner. 

He began with the large shoe-trunk. Having removed the cases that 
were on top, he tried to open it, but found that it was locked. A nearer 
examination showed that the lock was of the frail description usually 
found in such trunks. He further noticed that a small label was gummed 
on the top of the trunk. On wiping away the dust which covered it, 
he found that this label bore Dunning’s name. He could not open the 


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143 


trunk without forcing the lock. After a brief pause he resolved to do 
this. Looking round the room, he soon found a hammer and a chisel. 
With a few blows he broke the hasp and opened the lid. 

The trunk was almost empty. There were some papers, some half- 
worn clothes, a large bottle of laudanum, almost full, and a bunch of 
keys — five in all, two very small. Trevaskis took these out and looked 
around with increasing interest. It seemed unlikely that these keys 
should be kept here unless they were used to open boxes stored in the 
same place. There was a pile of wood and some bags heaped up near 
the furnaces. He turned the bags over, and found that they contained 
coke. There were six bags in all, and as he displaced the last he noticed 
that the ground close to it, in a southerly direction, was slightly raised. 
He instantly got a double-pointed pick to turn the earth over. At the 
first stroke he felt the concussion of the pick against a hard, unyielding 
surface. Upon this, he got a shovel and worked more cautiously. In 
less than two minutes he had uncovered the lid of a large, strong wooden 
box. It was fixed in a recess in the ground, and in front there was a 
slight cavity facing the lock. The largest of the keys fitted it, and Tre- 
vaskis turned it with a somewhat unsteady hand. 

This box, unlike the other, was quite full. On top there was a suit of 
clothes which seemed very much out of place in a receptacle so jealously 
guarded. To wit : an <Jid, well-worn gray overcoat, very large, and not 
free from stains ; a pair of dark moleskin trousers, with some earth-stains; 
a soft brown felt hat with a large brim, and a corduroy waistcoat. Tre- 
vaskis regarded these articles with some wonder. They were exactly of 
the kind that old Bushmen have by them as a best suit. After putting 
these aside, the next object that attracted his attention was a large car- 
pet-bag. He took it by the handle to lift it out with one hand, but he 
could not move it without a strong effort. 

“ There’s gold in it ! there’s gold in it !” he cried in a voice hoarse 
with excitement. His hands trembled as he fitted one of the small keys 
into the lock. But though he uttered the words over and over again, 
and in a manner believed them, the sight that met his eyes when the bag 
was fairly opened, and the upper layers of cloth removed, fairly took 
away his breath. 

There were in all seventy- eight nuggets of gold, each folded in a piece 
of buckskin. Some of them weighed from seven to ten ounces, others 
a few pennyweights. He unwrapped them one by one, till they were all 
uncovered, lying in a great heap of almost pure gold. As Trevaskis 
looked at this, his breath came fast and thick, his lips were dry and 
parched, his head dizzy. 

“ It isn’t Colmar gold — it’s nugget gold. It’s the gold that Webster 
took from the tributers near Hooper’s Luck!” he said in a low, horrified 


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whisper. And close on this came the thought that this gold was stained 
with blood, and that he would not touch it, that he dared not take it for 
his own. But the thought carried no conviction with it, and died away 
almost as soon as it arose. 

Some of the kindly old divines who write with ardor of the benefi- 
cence with which the world is governed, would have us believe that temp- 
tations are sent in proportion to the degree of man’s strength to resist 
them. When we leave the optimism of the cloister, we are unfortunately 
met by the fact that many temptations come with cruel psychological 
exactness at the moment when the one who is tempted is least able to 
bear the strain. Never before had gold, and all that it can buy, been so 
passionately coveted by Trevaskis as on this night. 

“ There must be two thousand pounds’ worth of nuggets here,” he 
thought, taking up one after the other slowly. Then a hazy recollection 
shot across his mind, of having seen an old pair of scales somewhere 
among the debris around. In a few moments he had discovered them, 
with the weights, hard by, wrapped in a piece of brown paper. To 
weigh the nuggets of gold, from the largest to the smallest, was the 
work of a quarter of an hour. There were five hundred and forty ounces 
in all, and so little of quartz or foreign mineral matter that barely twenty 
ounces need be deducted on this score. Yes, there were over two thou- 
sand pounds’ worth, all ready packed in this cafpet-bag ! 

There could be no doubt that it was the gold Webster had committed 
murder for ; and after Searle told his tale to Dnnning, the late manager 
had discovered the gold here. Was there any more ? What of those 
ten months during Webster’s management, when the weekly yield of the 
Colmar Mine had fallen from a thousand ounces a week to less than six 
hundred? What about Searle’s statement as to the strange diminu- 
tion in the amalgam ? In face of the possibilities that these thoughts 
suggested, the gold he had discovered began to appear but as a paltry 
stop-gap in Trevaskis’s eyes. For the first time in his life, a feeling of 
voracious, overpowering avarice seized him. Gold, gold, in masses, in 
heaps, in quantities to represent twenty or thirty thousand pounds ! 
This was what would really mean restored wealth and prosperity for him. 
Was it, perhaps, hidden in heaps somewhere within this cave room ? 
Was it for nothing that these furnaces had been so firmly fixed, and all 
the requisites for smelting gold provided ? 

Trevaskis, feeling as if his brain were on fire, renewed his search in the 
box with feverish haste. But very soon he was arrested by a strange and 
ghastly object. After removing a large, fiat portfolio, which lay under 
the carpet-bag, there was a square wooden box without a lid, the top 
covered over with several layers of tissue paper. In the act of removing 
these, Trevaskis became conscious of a faint, sickly odor. The next mo- 


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145 


raent, as he lifted a sheet of paper, he caught a glimpse of human hair. 
He stared at the sight for a moment, in incredulous dismay. Then he 
removed the last sheet. Now there could be no mistake about it. The 
back of a human head, with long, thick gray hair straggling at the ends, 
lay fully revealed, and the nauseous smell had increased. 

Trevaskis retreated some steps. The sweat stood in great, cold drops 
on his forehead ; his whole body was shaking with terror. Should he 
replace the articles he had taken out of the box, close it, and flee ? The 
thought of murder had been present with him from the moment he had 
sighted the nuggets. Involuntarily he had been, from time to time, on 
the track of the man who had ridden so hard to Hooper’s Luck, and 
then back with these gold nuggets, leaving behind him a man stark and 
stiff, with his head horribly battered. Was this the evidence of another 
crime ? 

Trevaskis could not have told how long he stood overcome with horror 
and a feeling of miserable irresolution, when a sudden sullen, reverber- 
ating sound seemed to shake the earthen walls and roof that environed 
him. He started violently, overcome with guilty fear. The next mo- 
ment he knew that it was the sound of a blast in the mine, and with this 
the thought of his surroundings arose before him as vividly as they had 
pressed on his mind when he lay in the semi-obscurity of the bar-parlor 
in the Colmar Arms. 

He closed the lid of the strong-box hurriedly, and carried the portfolio 
and the carpet-bag containing the gold to the little deal table. On open- 
ing the portfolio he soon saw that it contained some of Dunning’s pri- 
vate papers and letters. Among the latter he took one up at hazard, and 
began to read it without any thought of making a discovery that should 
affect his present position. It began with expressions of gratitude for 
the hospitality and kindness which the writer had received at the Colmar 
Mine, during a visit of four or five weeks. 

“ And now let me tell you,” said the writer on the second page, “ that 
so far from having forgotten our talk the night before I left, as you 
seem to fancy, I have been more successful in carrying out my commis- 
sion than I could have hoped. My dear boy, you may consider that your 
bet of £200 with your old Sandhurst mate is in your pocket ! I tell 
you what, old man — I’ll stake my professional reputation as a man of 
thirty, whose fate it is to take the part of an aged father and a doting 
grandfather more frequently than any other roles^ that the wig and beard 
I send you, coupled with a few other precautions, will render you abso- 
lutely unrecognizable.” 

“ The wig !” repeated Trevaskis, half aloud, with a dawning light in 
his eyes. In a moment he was back again at the strong-box. He opened 
it and pulled out what looked like a human head. It was a wig, and 
10 


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under it was a long gray beard and moustache. At the bottom of the 
box lay a dead rat. Trevaskis hauled it out by the tail and flung it with 
all his might to the farther end of the cave room. Then, with a feeling 
of growing triumph, the elation of a man who is gradually assured of 
victory, he returned to the table and began to turn over the other con- 
tents of the portfolio. 

Presently he came upon a plan of the cave room — an exact drawing 
that showed the conformation of the hanging wall and the floor, with 
well-deflned circles in sixteen spots, five of them in the narrow passage 
running northward. Trevaskis took one of the picks and dug cautiously, 
but with extraordinary rapidity. In a very short time he unearthed a 
large, strong, blue glass bottle, of the kind known as a Winchester pint. 
It was closed with a glass stopper, and over this was tied several folds 
of newspaper. The bottle contained a solid, grayish mass of matter, being 
about three-quarters full. It was amalgam. The quantity in the bottle 
Trevaskis briefly reckoned was worth one thousand three hundred pounds. 
If there were sixteen of these hidden in the cave room, the total value 
would be something over twenty thousand pounds ! 

His brain reeled at the thought. For a few moments a sort of paraly- 
sis of mind and body overtook him. He felt like one who in a dream 
stands upon a precipice where one false step may be fatal. The treasure 
was within his grasp; only, in the first moment of success, his joy and 
elation were quenched by the thought that in a few days Fitz-Gibbon 
would, as he had said, make a thorough search 1 But with the thought 
rose a fierce determination to prevent this in some way or another — in 
some way or another to secure the wealth around him. But the first 
thing was to make sure that it was here. With this thought, Trevaskis 
set to work once more. The five spots marked on the plan as being in 
the northern passage each yielded up its precious deposit of a large 
bottle containing, on the average, half a hundredweight of amalgam, 
which would, when retorted and smelted, yield about forty -two per cent, 
of gold. 

After that, Trevaskis turned over one by one the other spots marked 
on the plan. Not one failed; each held its own share of the treasure. 
As he looked around, making calculations, and adding up the amount of 
this strange and suddenly discovered wealth, Trevaskis’s attention was at- 
tracted by the look of the bottles which had been hidden in the north- 
ern passage. They looked much fresher than the rest. The newspaper 
which was tied round the stoppers, though earth-stained, was not worn. 
He unwrapped one of these. It contained a date, and the date went 
back no further than three months. At sight of this, Trevaskis gave a 
low, ironical laugh. 

‘‘ So it wasn’t only Webster, and the other fellow before him ... for 


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147 


I’m certain the one who first began to creep into this place was stealing 
the amalgam ... it was the extremely able and clever and trustworthy 
Dunning as well,” he thought. And then for the first time some misgiv- 
ings, questions, scruples, and remorseful qualms overtook him. One by 
one he replaced the bottles, and lightly covered them over. Then he 
went back to the strong wooden box. He turned over the wig and 
examined it attentively. He slipped it on his head, and found that it 
fitted him as if he had been measured for it, coming well down on his 
forehead and the back of his neck. There were fastenings in the wig 
a little above each ear, to which the patriarchal-looking whiskers and 
moustache could be secured. Trevaskis replaced both carefully in the 
wooden box without a lid. Close beside this he noticed a smaller one ; 
it was locked, but the second of the two small keys fitted the lock. On 
opening the box he found it contained a fiuid for darkening the skin, an 
adhesive gray powder for the eyebrows, and a crayon for deepening 
wrinkles. There was half a sheet of paper, with instructions on these 
points written in the same handwriting as the letter regarding the wig. 

It was apparent, then, that, on the pretext of winning some bet, Dun- 
ning, the able, honest, and trustworthy manager, had through his actor 
friend secured the means of completely disguising himself. At the bot- 
tom of the sheet of instructions Trevaskis read the words, “ The wig 
and whiskers are those of a hairy old man who had been for some time 
remote from a barber. I think it would be well, in making your eye- 
brows gray, to brush them backward with a weak solution of gum. This 
will not only give them a hairy aspect, but aid materially in giving a 
different aspect to the eyes.” 

“ He intended to go away the very day after that on which he was 
killed,” reflected Trevaskis. ‘‘ He was going to Melbourne, and o-oing 
to take this nugget gold with him ; that would be less suspicious than 
the amalgam. In fact, to sell amalgam would mean to be marked at 
once as a thief — ” 

Trevaskis paused at the word, and then uttered it half aloud, “ A 
thief.” It had an ugly sound. Yes, Dunning’s plans had all been care- 
fully laid ,* so were the plans of the men who had got the gold on tribute 
at Hooper’s Luck ^ so were Webster’s plans. As the ugly sequence of 
murder, insanity, and sudden death rose before him, Trevaskis felt an 
impulse to take a solemn oath not to touch this gold, to let it come to 
the company to whom it belonged of right, to let Fitz-Gibbon discover 
the lot, all but the nuggets, which would in the natural course of events 
revert to Dunning’s heirs, when they came to claim the property he had 
left at the mine. It was so much mixed up with the company’s prop- 
erty that it would be diflicult in some cases to decide which was which. 
Another fact that had come to Trevaskis’s knowledge, since he had been 


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at the Colmar Mine, was that the directors had made an advance of 
salary to Dunning, to the extent of £150, a few weeks before his sudden 
death. Hence all his books, papers, and belongings were kept as secu- 
rity by the company, till a brother of Dunning’s in one of the other 
colonies, with whom they had communicated, should repay the amount 
and claim the late manager’s belongings. 

Trevaskis pictured to himself this man’s surprise and delight on find- 
ing that a box in an underground lumber-room contained over two 
thousand pounds’ worth of gold ; he pictured to himself Fitz-Gibbon’s 
excitement and wonder on finding this great store of stolen amalgam. 
What a commotion there would be among the shareholders! Yes, it 
would be a nine days’ wonder, and then it would be forgotten, and 
things would go on as usual, and he would remain in miserable exile in 
the heart of the Salt-bush country. Such a chance as this did not come 
in a man’s way twice in a lifetime. 

“ Ah, what shall I do, what shall I do ?” he cried, suddenly fiinging 
himself down on the bunk that was close to the entrance into the room. 
His temples and pulses were throbbing stormily. His mind was in a 
whirl. He started up after a few minutes, and took up a double-pointed 
pick, with the purpose of beginning there and then to dig a great hole 
in which to hide all the amalgam. But the next moment he threw 
down the pick with a bitter smile at the senility of the plan. No pos- 
sible hiding-place could be devised with any certainty of being secure, in 
a place that would be subjected to a ‘‘ thorough search ” by one look- 
ing for a treasure. His thoughts wandered to other modes of secreting 
this fortune. All around lay hundreds of miles of waste and unin- 
habited country. And yet there was no safety, no security, for such a 
treasure as this, except in the bowels of the earth, in a place locked 
against accident and design. 

‘‘ If I could retort the amalgam in here ... if I had even a month to 
turn round in. . . I could take up a claim somewhere near, and carry the 
gold away — according to Webster’s plan. Once I had the gold in my 
possession, safe away from here — Oh, I’ll do it. I’ll do it, .somehow or 
another, somehow or another — ” 

Trevaskis was pacing up and down rapidly, restlessly, with something 
of the fierceness of a caged animal, when suddenly a shrill whistle broke 
the silence. He drew out his watch and stared at it incredulously. It 
seemed impossible that this should be the summons at six o’clock in the 
morning for the miners who were to take the place of the night-shift an 
hour later. His watch had stopped, he had forgotten to wind it up ; 
but he now noticed that the candle, which he had put into the lantern 
whole, was burning low. He stood for a moment irresolute. Then he 
took the carpet-bag containing the nugget gold out of the box, and, 


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149 


after shutting it, he sprinkled some shovelfuls of earth over the lid. 
Taking the lantern, he went out of the cave room and into the passage, 
the long, narrow iron passage, whose length had won Searle’s fond ad- 
miration. Now its purpose was apparent. It had been built by Web- 
ster, so that he could pass to and fro, when he was robbing the mine and 
contemplating his ill-gained possessions, screened from observation. 

When he reached the first little square window, Trevaskis found that 
the sun was rising. As his eyes encountered the clear morning light, 
he became conscious of a sharp, smarting pain in them. The excited 
vigils of the night had made them worse. Yet so engrossed was he 
with the thought of his strange discovery, that as soon as he reached his 
oflSce, and had locked the door leading into the passage, and put the 
gold into the strong safe in his office, his first act was to walk slowly 
down beside the passage, to examine its construction more closely, and 
to see whether any of the sheets of iron were loose. As he looked in at 
one of the little windows, he noticed for the first time that they were 
furnished with blinds of dark-green American leather. These were now 
closely wound up, so that he had not previously noticed them. 

“Ah, he forgot nothing!” thought Trevaskis, still gazing in at the 
little window. At that moment he heard approaching footsteps, and a 
cheery voice calling him by name, which he recognized as Fitz-Gibbon’s. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

“ Good-morning, captain 1 Have you been having a look at the new 
claim ? I dreamed last night there was a tremendous heap of gold there. 
If that’s true, you’ll be forced to take it seriously, you know,” said Victor. 

Trevaskis could not afterwards recall what his answer was to Fitz- 
Gibbon’s remarks, as they walked together across to the ofiices. He re- 
tained his wits suflSciently, however, to avoid the common intriguer’s 
folly of over-reaching himself by elaborate explanations of what might 
be taken for granted. The iron passage and the underground room 
were in his charge — under his sole key; and the conversation that had 
taken place might naturally have led him to view them with more 
interest. “ Whatever I do in this affair, I must always try to seem un- 
concerned and on the square,” he thought. 

“ You are up very early to-day,” he said, as they drew near the 
offices. 

“ Yes, I’m going for a good long ride. I couldn’t sleep, somehow, 
once the daylight dawned this morning.” 


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Adj one observing Victor would have noticed a look of curious pre- 
occupation in his face. Now and then he seemed to be on the point of 
smiling, and then he would knit his brows and walk a little faster, as if 
pursuing a troublesome thought, which he was determined to bring 
down. He went into the office for his riding-whip, and when he stood 
within the threshold he looked around inquiringly. Was it only a few 
hours since he had gone out of this room and walked down to Stone- 
house in the gathering twilight? As he rode through the fresh morn- 
ing air, he went over all that had then happened for the hundredth 
time. He did not see the ashy plains lying in monotonous uniformity 
under the fresh blueness of the morning, nor the majestic sweep of the 
horizon all round where the gray earth seemed to be folded within the 
edges of the jewel-clear sky. He was going over the few simple events 
of the past evening minute by minute, word by word — nay, step by 
step — when, after leaving the office, he crossed the reef, not following 
either of the paths, but taking a longer route and approaching the house 
by the western entrance, instead of coming, as his wont was, by the 
southern end, where his own room stood with its separate door opening 
into the avenue that encompassed the house on every side. 

The hope that led him to do this was fulfilled. Doris was on the 
veranda, looking towards the west, her face touched with that wistful 
inquiry which, since her mother’s death, had come to be her more 
habitual expression when alone. It was the opportunity he wanted, be- 
cause, as he told himself, it wopld be so intolerable to meet her before 
others, after that sad little first meeting and abrupt parting, without 
giving voice to something of the sympathy that had been pulsing in his 
heart ever since. There was no awkwardness in their meeting, for the 
moment Doris saw him drawing towards her, she turned to meet him 
with grave simplicity, without hesitation or embarrassment. 

I was so sorry, after you had gone on Saturday evening,” she said, 
returning his bow and meeting his glance with the confiding, wide-eyed 
gaze of a child who has never known fear. There was no trace of tears 
now on the thick, sweeping lashes ; the sweet, low timbre of the voice 
was not strained ; and the pure, soft oval cheeks were lightly touched 
with a faint, peachy bloom. 

“Not sorry on my account, I hope, unless because of my fearful stu- 
pidity,” he answered. He tried to speak lightly ; but he was so deeply 
moved that he was conscious of a treacherous unsteadiness in his voice. 
In the instant that her eyes met his, and that he heard the sound of her 
voice, he admitted to himself that, from the moment he had set eyes on 
her, he had been constantly thinking about her in one way or another, 
especially another — that is, in roundabout, indirect, fugitive, unpremed- 
itated ways. 


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“Your fearful stupidity? But when, then she said a little wonder- 
ingly. 

“ Why, when I wanted to say something to you so very much, that 
would make you feel a little better, and instead — ” 

“ Ah, but, don’t you know, sometime^ nothing can make you feel bet- 
ter until you have cried all you want to,’’ she said in a lower voice. 

“But it is bad for one to grieve too much ; and I am sure good and 
wise people can often say things that help one in trouble.” 

“ What do they say ?” 

“ Ah, you see, I am not one of them. I am not able to do more than 
feel I would do anything in the world to keep you from being sad.” 

“But what do you think they would say to you if you had lived all 
your life with your mother? You two together, and then — Ah, but 
you haven’t — you came away from her, didn’t you ?” 

“ By George ! she is not going to forget that against me,” thought 
Victor, twirling the point of his moustache a little nervously. 

“ You see, it is because you are not a girl,” Doris said, half apologeti- 
cally, feeling that she had, perhaps, reflected rather severely on her new 
acquaintance. 

“ But suppose good and wise people knew a girl,” she went on, moved 
at the picture rising before her, and deeply in earnest in her inquiry — 
“ one who had been with her mother day and night all her life, never 
away from her, and her mother was the noblest and the best and the 
, dearest, always sweet and gentle, and doing everything that was good ; 
and the mother was taken away, and the girl was left alone, and could 
never see her mother again as long as she was in this world ; only some- 
times, when she slept, her mother would come, and the girl would fold 
her arms tight about her so as not to be left alone again, but when she 
woke up they were empty. Oh, tell me what any one could say to 
make the trouble less!” 

Her lips were quivering, and there was an intensity of pathos in her 
voice which went direct to her listener’s heart. Indeed, it is probable 
that this voice would have done that without the deep thrill that per- 
vaded it. For a passing moment he feared that the keeu edge of flier 
grief would again overcome her. But he soon perceived that her sorrow 
was of that calm and pervasive kind which trains even the young and 
inexperienced into dignified self-restraint, which is swept away only by 
those flood-tides that arise when in solitude. 

What could any one say to make the trouble less ? Her great, radiant 
eyes were raised to his face awaiting his reply. And he, instead of 
being able to make answer with some serene and lofty maxims culled 
from the sayings of saints or sages, was insanely asking how it was he 
had never before seen eyes anything at all like these, and then, where 


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could these violets have grown, whose breath was around her with such 
delicate, haunting fragrance? With an effort, he pulled himself together. 

“ I think they would say different things, you know, in different ages,” 
he said, feeling acutely the abject lameness of his words. And then, a 
little inspired by the expectant look on Doris’s face, he went on to say 
that in the old heathen world wise men bade people remember various 
things that should moderate human grief, but that Christians dwell on 
other thoughts, such as the happiness of those who are taken from us. 
“ Not because they have left us, you know,” said Victor, feeling acutely 
that he ought not to have ventured on a theme so little familiar to him. 

Doris listened in grave silence, saying, as Victor finished talking, 

“ Ah, yes ; that is what Mrs. Challoner and Kenneth say.” 

Kenneth ? Does he live anywhere near ?” 

Doris explained who her old friend was, and how they expected to 
see him on one of his rounds in the Colmar district in a few weeks. 
Then, after a little pause, inspired by a growing confidence in her new 
friend, whose voice and eyes were so full of gentle kindness, she said, 
a little hesitatingly, 

“ There is one thing, though, that often keeps me from being too 
sad : though mother cannot come back to me except in my dreams, I 
shall one day go to her — perhaps even soon.” 

She stopped, struck by the look of startled pain that came into Vic- 
tor’s face. 

“Oh, no ; don’t say that!” he cried imploringly. ^ 

“But, you know, we all must go away one day, just like the wood- 
swallows who used to come to Ouranie. To-day they would be in the 
trees singing and flying across the lake, with their p;;ptty silvery breasts 
and wide, dark wings, and to-morrow they would be all gone. One could 
never tell the reason why. The almond-trees would be loaded with blos- 
som perhaps, the violets out thick, and the Indian doob-grass would 
have lost the last bit of brown, down by the shores of Gauwari, where 
it grew so thick; and yet they went, because the day had come. . . . 

I do not believe you like what I am saying,” she said, suddenly noticing 
that a wistfully pained look was still in his eyes. 

“ Yes ; I would like anything you said. But I don’t like you to think 
of such sad things ; you are too young.” 

“ But I am more than sixteen ; and even little children often die- 
like that boy last week of poor Mrs. Doolan’s.” 

“ She was burned out to-day. Did you know ?” said Victor, who, 
having escaped the snare of explaining how the good and wise admin- 
istered consolation, was now anxious to divert Doris’s thoughts from so 
grave a theme as that of departing from this world like a wood-swallow 
who forgets the secret of returning. 


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“ Oh, yes ; Mrs. Challoner has had her brought here with her baby. 
She had only time to snatch it up and run outside. Would you like to 
see the baby ?” 

“ No, thank you, not at all,” answered Victor, with an unnecessary 
fervor. It was not that he disliked babies more than the average of his 
sex, but there are moments when no infantine charms can soothe the 
pain of an interruption. 

“ It is a very nice little thing ; we are going to make clothes for it, 
and for the mother. It is not you who send men away from the mine, 
is it ?” 

“No. I just have to put down how many hours they work, and pay 
them, and help to clean up the gold, and so on.” 

“And which do you like doing best?” 

“ I like it best when the oflSces are locked and I come across to Stone- 
house,” said Victor, with a little smile. 

“ Yes, isn’t it a nice house to be in this place ?” said Doris, looking 
around, “and with trees round it! but they cannot get flowers to grow 
here. I sometimes feel as if I would be ill for flowers.” 

Victor’s heart gave a sudden leap. 

“ What kind of flowers do you like best ?” he asked, making a rapid 
calculation of how long it would take one of the best florists in town to 
make up a box of his rarest and choicest flowers to send on to the Col- 
mar Mine. 

“ I can hardly tell you ; I think I like them all best in turn. If I said 
I liked roses best, I would at once think of violets, and then I would 
think of water-lilies — like those with lovely waxen cups and saffron 
hearts that grew in thousands on the edge of Gauwari. I like even 
orchids.” 

“ Ah, then, you don’t like orchids quite so much ?” 

“ No, except, perhaps, white ones. All white flowers are so lovely. 
But I do not like any hot-house flowers as much as those that grow out 
in the sunshine, and in the light of the moon and the stars — where the 
birds sing, and the dawn comes red into the sky over the tops of the 
trees.” ^ - 

Doris paused suddenly, as if she had been betrayed into saying too 
much. 

“ Well, I never thought of it before,” said Victor ; “ but now that 
you speak of it, how sickening it must be to be shut up with a ther- 
mometer and warm pipes, instead of being out where the dawn and 
twilight come ! All the outlines become so visionary, and there is a 
faint, dreamy light. It is like a gentle swooning away, like things you 
half remember in a pleasant dream. I think these are the loveliest hours 
of all, especially in the woods.” 


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“ I am glad you think that,” she answered quickly. “ And have you 
noticed how there is always one bird that keeps on singing after the 
rest? — very often a honey-bird, when the gum-trees are in blossom. Oh, 
do you know, I am really very idle,” she said suddenly. “ That poor 
woman who was burned out,” she went on in explanation, “ has nothing 
left for herself and the babyi Her husband was sent away from the 
mine, and he is somewhere looking for work. She had two one-pound 
notes, and they were burned too — everything gone. We all are doing 
some needlework for herself and the child.” 

A little later, when they were in the drawing-room that had been 
more especially set aside for Doris, the industry that prevailed was re- 
markable. Mrs. Challoner was changing one of her own serviceable 
dresses to fit the homeless woman ; Euphemia was busied with another 
garment; and Doris worked with skilful, rapid fingers at a little pink 
dress. Challoner and Victor tried their skill one against the other at a 
game of chess. And always in the pauses during which his opponent 
studied the moves that might gain him the victory, the young man’s 
eyes wandered round the room, noting some of the things that had be- 
fore given its air of delicate culture and refinement to the Ouranie home. 
The rows of morocco-bound books in the dwarf bookcases of ebony 
touched with gold moulding, ranged against the wall ; the graceful an- 
tique vases ; the rare china ; the pictures ; the delicately carved fans ; 
the brackets with their photographs of gently nurtured men and women ; 
the soft silken curtains that draped the windows ; the branched cande- 
labra of old, massive silver, wdth their many-shaded candles diffusing a 
rosy light over the room, and, above all, the exquisite young face with 
the heavy, upward-curving eyelashes, casting a pathetic shadow under 
the radiant eyes — all these enchained Victor’s eyes. It seemed like a 
dream, that a scene in such curious contrast with its outward surround- 
ings should be found in the heart of the Salt-bush country, and closely 
neighbored by the Colmar Mine. Perhaps it was little wonder that once 
and again Victor came off second-best at chess on this evening. 

But still you have more skill than I have. I look for a beating the 
next time,” said Challoner, as he gathered up the chessmen. Then, 
before going out to smoke on the veranda, he begged Doris to play a 
little. “ You are just quite a Dorcas meeting to-night,” he added, 
with his slow, benevolent smile. ‘‘ So I’ll only ask for that piece with 
the birds calling to one another.” 

On this, Doris put down the little pink dress and went to the piano. 
After a few preluding bars, she played one of those improvisations which 
her mother used to find so full of woodland charm. The fiute-like w^ar- 
blings of the magpies as they sing, when the faint vapors that hover over 
the woods begin to swim out of sight in the clear dawn ; the fan-tails’ 


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155 


chorals of exceeding gladness ; the sweet tinkling calls of the superb 
warblers, first a solitary bird trilling its magical notes, then another and 
another, till all the air is rifted with ecstatic sounds — all were cunningly 
interwoven on a rippling accompaniment which Doris had transposed 
from an old cradle-song. Her mother had found delight in listening to 
her reproducing these snatches of bird-songs, and this was the first thing 
the girl could bear to play after leaving Ouranie. * She had played it 
over and over again, trying to fancy that it might somehow reach her 
mother’s ears, and that it pleased her as in the old, happy days, till she 
had caught the keen, fluctuating nuances of bird-notes with marvellous 
precision. 

Victor stood at the end of the piano, looking and listening as if spell- 
bound. 

“ That was a little troop of singing honey-birds, I think, at the end,” 
he said in a low voice, with a lambent glow in his eyes that was new to 
them. 

‘‘Yes; I was trying to remember how they called to each other when 
they first found our Murray wattles in bloom down by the oleander 
bushes,” answered Doris, in her gravely simple way. 

“ Do you know this bird ?” she added, striking a few chords which 
made deep, re-echoing cries of hubuh huh ! hubuh huh ! with faint, 
hollow-sounding reverberations, very weird and solemn. 

“ Oh, yes, I do,” Snswered Victor eagerly. “ Where did I hear them 
one Michaelmas vacation, when I went to Mount Gambier ? I remember 
now : it was in the reedy marshes of the dismal swamp. That is the 
booming of the bittern. But I have never seen one.” 

Doris, it turned out, had long watched for a sight of one by the shores 
of Gauwari, and after she had resumed her work Victor sat on a chair 
near her to glean information as to the plumage and habits of the bit- 
tern. Rather a large bird, the neck very long, mottled chestnut-brown 
and black ; with what avidity he learned these details ! And then, when 
the bittern was exhausted, his eyes fell on a chair-back bordered with 
the most grotesque little figures, outlined in light and dark crimson 
silks, others in pale and dark blue. 

“ What very strange-looking creatures these are !” he said, examining 
them closer. 

A faint smile rose on Doris’s face, and he guessed that the needle 
which flew so nimbly in her slender, rose-tipped fingers was responsible 
for these funny little eflSgies in Chinese clothing. 

“ What can they be ?” he asked, watching to see her look up. 

“ They are Gooloos,” answered Doris, smiling more broadly, “ and 
they used to live on the far side of the Wall of China.” 

“ Most of them seem to be in great trouble. Are they friends of yours ?” 


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Oh, I do not like them very much ; but I am sorry for them.” 

Why are you sorry for them ?” 

‘‘ Because the poor little mites are always trying to do things they 
had better not.” 

“ What sort of things?” 

“ To make shadows stay in the same place, to turn sunshine into fogs, 
to make the moon and the stars keep quite still, to teach the birds to 
count one, two, three, instead of singing.” 

“ The poor Gooloos ! And that is why so many of them are crying ?” 

“ Yes, and because it is easier to hide their faces in their hands than 
to make them look properly sorry.” 

On this Victor laughed softly, saying, 

“ And yet, in all their grief, they have such lovely colored robes.” 

“ They must all keep their own colors, you see ; they belong to the 
crimson faith and the blue faith.” 

“ What is their faith besides wearing pretty colors ?” 

‘‘ Oh, I think it is what they want other people to believe,” answered 
Doris thoughtfully. 

Victor smiled as he recalled it all. And yet, in thinking of Doris, 
even in solitude, the expression uppermost on bis face was a deeply seri- 
ous, appealing look. The austere silence of these vast plains began to 
insensibly color his thoughts. Not even the cry of a bird or a breath of 
wind broke the stillness, which the golden sunshine, growing stronger 
and fuller, seemed to intensify — a stillness deep and breathless as that 
which broods over the landscape in the background of Eaphael’s Vi- 
sion of Ezekiel.” In such a scene, with an air so light and pure that one 
becomes unconscious of inhaling it, the mind which has not yet lost the 
freshness of youth is readily touched to finer issues than those that pre- 
vail in a grosser atmosphere. 

What stores of buoyant fancies, what sunlight-enfolded thoughts, what 
radiant communion with Nature, the child must have possessed before 
the shadow of grief fell on her young life ! But she would gradually 
outlive this sorrow ; she would laugh and be gay once more in the light 
of the sun. Happy the hours that would win her back to the unspoiled 
gladness of her childhood ! So ran the thoughts of the young man ; and 
then, in thinking of the maiden, a curious mood of exalted, impersonal 
rapture grew on him — less keen than joy that is solely individual, but 
warmer and closer than the glow which comes at times with the onrush 
of thoughts as to the glad, vague possibilities of life. The hunger which 
had at times gnawed at his heart, as if for wider and deeper emotion 
than he had yet known, was satisfied. And yet, with this new-born felic- 
ity, the consciousness of disloyalty towards Helen, which had dismayed 
him in the tumult of his thpught§ on first seeing Doris, was now absent. 


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157 


It was as though, in addition to all that he knew of good in life, he had 
suddenly come on a revelation of its ideal glamour and preciousness. 
The face and form, so exquisite in their beauty and innocence, seemed 
to him a type of that spiritual loveliness which man worships rather than 
dreams of possessing. He would see her from day to day; he would 
find out ways of serving her, of bringing the rare smile oftener into her 
face. He pictured her looking at the beautiful fiowers for which she 
pined — white, fragrant fiowers. In two days from this he would bring 
them to her. His heart beat tumultuously at the thought. 

Then, as he rode into Colmar and passed by the post and telegraph 
office, the thought struck him that he would save more than a day by 
telegraphing to the florist. The office would be open in half an hour. 
He left his horse in the stable of the Colmar Arras and went into the 
dining-room. He passed one or two groups of men in eager, excited 
talk about gold finds and diggings and large nuggets. But he was too 
much absorbed in his own thoughts to hear what was being said. 


CHAPTER XX. 

I’ve had a glorious ride, captain,” he said, taking his accustomed 
place at the table, where breakfast awaited him. One sat reading a news- 
paper with his back to the window, whom Victor on entering took for 
Trevaskis. But on being thus addressed, he made his face visible above 
the paper, and Victor recognized the man he had seen at Broombush 
Creek on the previous Sunday. 

This is a pleasant surprise !” said Victor, and the two shook hands 
like old friends. 

“You know my given name, with its Bush prefix, is Oxford Jim. 
Allow me to introduce myself in proper form — James Vansittart. Oh, 
so you’re a Fitz-Gibbon? Are you any relation of the Captain Fitz- 
Gibbon who came out as aide-de-camp with Governor Somebody early in 
the sixties? His youngest son? Well, in appearance you’re a proper 
chip, etc., but otherwise the pendulum seems to have swung back. . . . 
You know what I mean. The father can’t exist without clubs and high 
play, and all the other little effete sophistications of society. But the 
son returns to the primal sanities of life, grilled chops and steel forks at 
eight o’clock in the morning, and a pursership at the Colmar. . . . I’m 
waiting with some impatience for the captain. I’m going to keep on 
the lay that he doesn’t know me, you see. It’s a little bit of comedy, 
and nothing is rarer in life. You pay for it at the theatre, but they give 


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you instead a slavey with a smudge on her face. I shall stay here for 
two or three weeks, probably. I’ve sent about a thousand pounds’ worth 
of gold on with the trooper to a bank in town. ... Of course you’ve 
heard all about the gold. I had a good mind to tell you on Sunday, 
but I was going to keep it a dead secret till I got to town and started a 
company. I’m not sure I hadn’t some floating ideas of playing the big 
man, and riding in my carriage, and losing my memory when I saw 
some poor devil trudging it on foot who worked with me for a year and 
a half. Lord, Lord ! what funny little guinea-pigs we all are !” 

Vansittart laughed softly, and sipped a little coffee, but made no pre- 
tence of eating. He had discarded his digger’s costume, and was attired 
in fresh white linen, and a tolerably fitting dark suit of clothes. He had 
also paid a visit to the barber, who combined his professional duties 
with a little temperance bar of what he called American drinks ; and the 
change that these little concessions to the usages of civilized society 
effected was much to his advantage. But that curious expression of 
vagueness in his eyes had deepened rather than decreased. He had been 
smoking his long-stemmed pipe, and Victor was again sensible of that 
faint, poppy-like odor which he had noticed the first time he was in Vansit- 
tart’s company. He evinced also the same proneness to speech, falling into 
complacent monologues, in which his own observations seemed to afford 
him that glow of enjoyment book-lovers find in reading a favorite author. 

When he found that Victor had not heard even a rumor of the excit- 
ing gold scene in the bar-room on the previous evening, Vansittart gave 
a graphic description of the event. Nothing had escaped him, except, 
of course, the man who had heard all in the next room, and whose part 
in the drama was to affect Victor in so unforeseen a manner. It was 
like those plans we form of life in which we leave nothing out except 
the master weaver, whose cunning threads are to form the most fateful 
pattern of our lives. 

“ I shouldn’t wonder if you found a few of your miners non est to- 
day,” said Vansittart, looking out at the window towards the mine, at 
the close of his narrative. 

“ Oh, if we have a dead-lock. I’ll turn digger myself,” answered Victor 
gleefully. 

“ Here he comes ; now for a little fun !” said Vansittart, taking his 
place at the table. “ Another cup of coffee, if you please,” he said to 
a maid who had come in with a fresh supply of chops. 

Trevaskis came in hurriedly, and sat down with a slight nod to Victor. 
His eyes were bloodshot, his face flushed, and there was a tremulous 
motion in his hands which he could not wholly control. He stared at 
Vansittart for a moment, and then said with a forced smile, 

“ Haven’t we met before, old man ?” 


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159 


Vansittart returned his look with a blank expression. Then, with a 
slow smile, he said, 

‘‘ You must have a good memory. I remember seeing you five years 
ago in a carriage going into Government House. There was a block, 
and your coachman had to rein in his fiery steeds for three or four min- 
utes. I was one of the vagabonds looking on, you know, feasting my 
eyes on the colonial aristocracy.” 

“ I didn’t see you then,” answered Trevaskis, a deeper flush rising in 
his face. 

‘‘ Oh, I met your eyes ; I looked at you particularly, for I thought to 
myself, ‘ Now, there’s a man who was probably not born in the purple. 
But by thrift and industry, and fair-dealing and perseverance, he has 
made his way to the front ranks. He is one of the men the newspaper 
fellows call the backbone of this great, young, democratic country.’ ” 

“ Stow your jaw ! what are you giving me such impudence for ?” broke 
out Trevaskis savagely. 

He had caught a passing smile on Victor’s face, when, having finished 
breakfast, be took out his pocket-book to word the telegram he was going 
to send when the oflSce should open ten minutes later. . . . ‘‘It’s a 
put-up thing between the two of them. He’s taking notes to make a 
good story out of it, for his friends in town,” was the thought that rose 
in Trevaskis’s mind, and goaded him into this sudden explosion of wrath. 

“ Impudence, my dear sir ! I assure you I know my place better,” 
answered Vansittart with unmoved suavity. 

“ ‘ Bless the squire and his relations ; 

Give us, Lord, our daily rations; 

Make us know our proper stations,’ 

were the first lines I lisped. Probably they will be the last I shall breathe 
when I ‘ shufl&e off this mortal coil ’ in some benevolent institution of 
your great democratic, etc., etc.” 

“ I suppose the big nuggets have got into your head, Jim. No doubt 
you’re one of the fellows who came here with the swags of gold last 
night, that every one is talking about,” said Trevaskis, trying to carry off 
the matter with the bluff, hearty manner of a man who can give and 
take a joke. 

“Jim — and pray who is Jim?” said Vansittart in a tone of amaze- 
ment, and drawing himself up with a haughty air. 

“ You say you do not remember the occasion on which I had the honor 
of seeing you, and yet you address me by my front name. I beg your 
pardon, sir, you have the advantage of me.” 

Trevaskis looked at Vansittart with baffled rage, and then glanced at 
Victor, But he was now oblivious of what was going on around him. 


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They were a curious trio*, Vausittart, happy in the little farce he was 
acting, and revelling in the consciousness of his newly found fortune, 
soothed into forgetfulness of the past by the treacherous nepenthe with 
which he had learned to drug his mind against memories of his wasted 
life. Trevaskis, with his brain inflamed by that cruellest of all lusts, the 
lust for gold ; his imagination alternately on fire with inchoate schemes 
for getting possession of the treasure he had discovered, and dazzling 
visions of returning to his family, to his lost place in society as a man 
of money and influence ; then dashed with cold fears by thoughts of the 
doom that had overtaken his predecessors. And witL these two, the 
young man, immersed in one of those charmed episodes in which all 
the world is full of opening roses, and dreams that have more ideal bliss 
than any vision of happiness that is translated into the implacable prose 
of existence. 

‘‘ I suppose the telegraph-oflSce is open by this time,” he said, glancing 
at his watch before he went out. The words brought a dew of cold per- 
spiration out on Trevaskis’s forehead. Fora moment the certainty seized 
him that Vansittart had given such information regarding the under- 
ground room to Victor as had induced him to telegraph the news direct 
to his uncle. The next moment he mocked at himself for his fears. 
“ Remember the man’s head and the dead rat,” he said to himself ; and 
^ this became a sort of rallying-point when moved by any sudden fear. 
Yet the hope that he might glean some inkling of what had passed be- 
tween the two induced him to make one more effort at a better under- 
standing with Jim. But Vansittart, with a gleam of enjoyment in his 
eyes, rebuffed him as before, and left the dining-room a few minutes 
after Victor had gone. 

‘‘Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.” He counted over the days 
that might intervene till ’Zilla returned. Fitz-Gibbon would then expect 
to carry out his proposed search. The excitement about the new dig- 
gings, and the rush that would be certain to take place, might prevent 
his securing ’Zilla’s help for a thorough examination for some little time, 
but would offer no bar to Fitz-Gibbon’s making investigations on his 
own account. And how could this be prevented without raising suspi- 
cions — suspicions, too, which the slightest examination of the cave room 
would more than verify ? If he could only have a clear month in which 
to retort the amalgam ! Nothing could be more fortunate than this dis- 
covery of gold in large quantities in the Colmar district, for it would en- 
able him, if once he secured the treasure, to dispose of it without much 
diflSculty. He could, for instance, remove the gold in a wagonette, and 
take up a solitary claim after resigning his post as mine-manager, and 
gradually invent his luck. Or, if the diggings that started had any im- 
portance, he could, as he had often done before, act as a sort of middle- 


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man, and buy up gold on the spot. He was well acquainted with the av- 
erage digger, and could count without fear of disappointment on buying 
up gold very readily for pound-notes paid on the spote . . . And, besides, if 
there was a rush he would only need to buy just as little or as much as 
suited him. The wildest rumors were always afloat as to the quantity 
of gold raised, and it was well known that a large proportion of diggers 
habitually concealed their flndings. He had once before smelted nug- 
gets, so as to prevent the banks from overreaching him, and there would 
be no difficulty in the way of his selling the gold in pure bars, assigning 
the same reason for his action. . . . Only let him safely secure the treas- 
ure, and other difficulties would disappear. 

On his way back to the mine, Trevaskis’s brain was in a whirl as to 
what, plan he should pursue. Near the engine-house he was met by some 
of the miners who wished to leave there and then, forfeiting two days’ 
wages. 

“ Go on and get your checks,” he answered laconically. He went into 
the smithy and watched one of the men at work as he sharpened some 
rock-drills. Then he passed on to the carpenter’s shed, where the car- 
penter was preparing some joists for repairing the roof of the powder- 
magazine, which was at the foot of the reef half a mile off. Roby con- 
sulted him as to the necessity of ordering an additional stock of shoes 
for the amalgam-pan, also of dies and battery-gratings. 

“ We sha’n’t want ’em for some time, but if there’s a big spurt at these 
new diggings we may be left in the lurch. The teamsters — ” 

“ All right ; send in a memo, to the purser of any articles you think 
should be sent for. I’ll look over the list before it’s sent.” 

“ I’m afeerd, cap’en, you’re not very well ; you’re lookin’ some white 
to-day,” said Roby. 

The flush on Trevaskis’s face had subsided, and his eyes, besides being 
mucb bloodshot, had a curiously contracted look;; with dark-red semi- 
circles under them. 

‘‘ No, I’m not at all well,” he answered. “ The fact is, I don’t believe 
I can stand the heat here at all. Just see how the sun is blazing down 
at half-past ten in the morning, and we’re only at the end of October.” 

“ I tell ’ee what it is, cap’en, you’ll ’ave to take to the under-room, as 
poor Cap’en Dunning did larst summer.” 

“ Well, I’ll go down and try it, after I finish ray morning round,” an- 
swered Trevaskis in an indifferent voice. 

He did not go, however, until he saw Victor on his way to the Colmar 
Arms at one o’clock. When he descended, he went direct to the hidden 
trunk and took out the box containing the wig and beard. He also took 
the portfolio containing Dunning’s letters, and carried them into his room. 
So much of his many plots, at least, should take active form. He would 
11 


162 


THE SILENT SEA 


make sure of the gold locked in his safe, and he would invent some means 
of selling it, secured against detection. He had a kind of groping intu- 
ition that some plan would suggest itself, by which he could make use 
of Dunning’s preparations for disguise. 

He knew it would be useless for him to attempt to sleep. He locked 
the doors of his office and room, drew down the blinds, and fitted on the 
wig and false beard and moustache, and put on a pair of smoke-colored 
sun-glasses. The transformation was sufficiently striking. But it be- 
came still more so when, that night, after darkness closed in and he was 
secure from any interruption, he went through the process of deepening 
the lines in his face, of giving it that sun-bronzed hue which the mixture 
in the phial produced, and finally ruffling and powdering his eyebrows 
in the way that Dunning’s actor friend had suggested. Then he once 
more put on the wig and beard. They were so well made, so natural- 
looking, so closely fitting, that it was difficult to believe they would have 
disguised any one else as they disguised him. 

This completeness of disguise gave him a curious feeling of confidence. 
Dangers and difficulties lay in the way, no doubt, but the greatest diffi- 
culty of all was surmounted in having the means of hiding his identity 
so completely when he disposed of the gold. How to do that without 
running the risks which seemed inseparable from long delay kept him 
awake till long after midnight, though this was the second night through 
which his vigils extended. He was up next morning, notwithstanding, 
in time to see the men of the first shift go to work. There were no fresh 
departures for the diggings ; but the daily newspapers reported the sen- 
sational find of gold which had been revealed by two men who had been 
working within a few miles of each other in the locality of Broombush 
Creek, and prophecies were made as to the rush that was inevitable. It 
was further surmised that other solitary diggers had been for some time 
in the neighborhood with more or less success. Trevaskis glanced hur- 
riedly over the newspaper. Then he looked over his letters. There was 
one from the secretary of the company, informing him that a letter had 
been received from a brother of the late manager, intimating his inten- 
tion of coming to the colony in the course of six weeks after the date of 
writing, to look into his brother’s affairs, and take possession of the 
effects which were at the Colmar Mine. 

“ The letter was dated from Sydney,” wrote the secretary. “ So that 
Mr. Raphael Dunning may come by way of Broken Hill. In order to 
prevent mistake, the directors request me to say that the late manager’s 
personal belongings at the mine are to be handed over only on the pro- 
duction of their authorization to that effect.” 

Trevaskis’s first action after reading this letter was to turn to the port- 
folio and ransack the rest of the papers, at which he had not yet looked. 


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Two or three were concerned with unimportant matters, one relating to 
a little cottage which Dunning was apparently renting on behalf of some 
one not named. The next letter he took up contained a house-key. The 
letter enclosing it ran : 

“Sir, — Henclos pleas find recet for £9 10s. for Six mounth rent of Cotage noom- 
ber 4 in bendigo-row hindmarsh from 1 July to 31 decembur, hit bein’ cloas to the 
railway Station he won’t find no deferculty in findin’ hit, and whativer Date he come 
within the six mounth he can take posission but I must have a mounth Notis if he 
want to leeve at the end of the leese there is shutters to the Winders of the two front 
rums so if any pains is smarshed I dosnt hold myself Rispoansable witch the naybors 
is desent and not likely to brake in. Your rispeckful, 

“Noah Allert.” 

Trevaskis stared at this production for some moments. 

“ What the devil was the fellow up to with this?” he said, half aloud, 
and then in a moment it flashed across him — all the more readily because 
it offered a solution of one of those lame gaps which stared him in the 
face the moment he tried to think out a working scheme for disposing 
of over two thousand pounds’ worth of gold, in the guise of an old dig- 
ger. He steadied his mind now by a strong effort in the tumult of ex- 
citement which arose with the feeling that he saw his way clear before 
him. Step by step he went over his scheme ; he foresaw every difficulty ; 
he provided against every contingency ; he made sure of his safety from 
every point of view ; and he swore a great oath that what one man had 
failed to do because of insanity, and another because of sudden death, 
he would accomplish within a week. 

“No, nothing will happen to me, nothing will cross me. I’m the 
third — no, the fourth man ; for there was the digger who was murdered. 
I’m the fourth man that set his heart on enjoying this gold, and it’s 
against the law of averages that I, too, should fail — completely against 
the law of averages.” 


CHAPTER XXL 

When the mail-coach came in on Thursday morning, it was crammed 
with passengers, all bound for the new diggings. Half an hour later a 
large American wagon, drawn by four horses, also crowded with people 
bound for the same place, passed by the Colmar Mine. Then, all dur- 
ing the day vehicles of various descriptions were seen rumbling slowly 
on their way to this new Golden Jerusalem of the Salt-bush country. It 
turned out that over four hundred men had reached Nilpeena that morn^ 


164 


THE SILENT SEA 


ing by the early train, all bent on being the first in the field. Most of 
those who had money clubbed together and hired all the vehicles availa- 
ble in the township to convey themselves and their impedimenta to the 
gold-fields. Many of these were well equipped with tents, tools, and a 
couple of weeks’ rations. But the larger proportion were men who, on 
getting out at the railway station, tramped it on foot, with neither purse 
nor scrip, with a shovel rolled up in the blue blankets slung on their 
backs, carrying in one hand a “ billy,” black with use and a rigid ab- 
sence of outer scouring. Besides the pick or shovel there was perhaps a 
loaf in the swag, certainly a modicum of tea, sugar, and tobacco. 

They tramped on in a long, straggling line, their route marked here 
and there by columns of smoke, where some alone, some in groups of 
from three to five, halted to boil a billy of tea and smoke a pipeful of 
the strong fig-tobacco which Bushmen habitually use. Many were found 
among them who were without even these elementary necessities for 
tramping it to an unknown gold-field. But when they were in company 
with others who were better off, the more destitute ones were not left in 
need. Nor was any surprise felt at the faith, or recklessness, of men 
who had neither tea nor tobacco, nor food nor tools nor money to buy 
them — thus swelling a rush in which, to the uninitiated, a store of some 
at least of these would seem to be the only safeguard against starvation. 
But a rush in quest of gold is a species of gambling that has many queer 
features. The man who has a little knowledge and experience, and the 
one who, even without these, has brawny arms, and is not afraid of work, 
has, without money or tools, a better chance than the men who, lack- 
ing these, come with stores of everything else. Many of the men who 
have most experience in alluvial gold-diggings are chronically hard up. 
Whether they make hundreds of pence or of pounds in any given rush, 
they are equally likely to be penniless a month or two after it is over. 
They are invariably ready to start at an hour’s notice when the rumor of 
a fresh hunting-ground within a practicable distance reaches them. There 
is sure to be many a “tender-foot” and greenhorn who will be glad to 
give food and find tools in return for work, or a “ wrinkle ” or two in 
pegging out a claim. 

The amateur element was stronger than usual in the Broombush Creek 
rush by reason of being less than two days’ journey from the capital, and 
within thirty miles from a railway station. All day the long, irregular 
procession straggled on. After the mail-coach and the four-in-hand, as 
the American wagon was styled, came horsemen, bullock-drays, trollies, 
spring-carts ; even the one vegetable-cart of which Nilpeena boasted, drawn 
by a sturdy donkey, was there, piled up with the swags and shovels of 
half a dozen men, who walked before and after the rickety little machine 
which, in ascending the gentlest eminence, creaked as if its last moment 


THE SILENT SEA 


165 


were near at hand. And in advance of the vehicles, side by side, and 
after them, came the men, who walked with light or heavy burdens, some 
with none at all. Even at this early stage, those who had adventured 
the rush without money or baggage began to ascend the social scale. 
They were paid in money or kind by the more heavily laden to help 
them with their burdens. Already, too, some of those who had put their 
hand to the plough looked back. Though there were no scrubby heights 
to scale, or unknown deserts to cross, the arid, waterless nature of the 
country, and the unexpectedly large number who were making for the 
untried diggings, discomfited the less hardy spirits. 

Before noon, twenty men came asking for work at the Colmar Mine. 

“ Not much danger, ’pears to me, of our ’aving to shut up shop on 
haccount of the new diggings,” said Koby with a chuckle. 

“ Well, when you come to figure it out, eight or ten bob a day sure, 
is better than the ’ope o’ turnin’ gentleman by Hact o’ Parlyment, with 
the chance o’ perishing by starvation thrown in,” observed an old miner. 

All the men who had worked on the night-shift were standing at the 
doors of their huts and tents, or down at thel*' Colmar Arms, where the 
bar-room overflowed with dusty swagmen quenching their thirst, and 
listening with greedy eyes to the landlord’s frequently repeated narrative 
of the fabulous swags of gold, that had dazzled the eyes of all beholders 
in his bar-room three nights ago. No tale of enchantment or adventure 
was ever listened to with such devouring interest. In the bar and else- 
where nothing was to be heard but talk of claims and pegging out, of 
pockets and gutters and nuggets of gold ; of half-forgotten reminiscences 
of old diggings, and tragic stories of lucky diggers. There was an elec- 
trical thrill of excitement in the very atmosphere. Even Trevaskis, who 
had so many grim problems of his own to solve regarding gold, was in a 
measure carried out of himself by the wave of eager expectancy which 
stirred the place, as to the experiences that awaited the mixed multitude, 
hurrying in search of fortune to Broombush Creek. 

But one at least amid all this gold-fever hubbub was occupied with 
far other thoughts. The mail-coach that had brought the first instalment 
of diggers had also brought Victor the flowers for which he had tele- 
graphed on the Monday morning. There had been a delay of two days 
in sending them, because of an error made in transmitting the message 
from the Colmar office. But here they were at last. As soon as Vic- 
tor had the office to himself, he cut the cords and opened the boxes to 
sprinkle the flowers with water. His eyes sparkled at sight of their love- 
liness, and thoughts of the pleasure they would give Doris. He counted 
the moments till he could bring them to her. Yet he purposely delayed 
going with them till it was close on seven. 

He had observed that after sunset she almost invariably sat for some 


166 


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time on tlie western veranda, watching the dying light in the sky above 
the immense landscape, into which the feverish seekers for gold had 
been hurrying all day. This evening the after-glow was unusually vivid, 
spreading gradually in waves of pure fire-color, embracing the most deli- 
cate nuances of tint, from a broad line of deep carnation low down on 
the vast horizon to a faint silvery pink far overhead. As soon as he 
crossed the reef and began to descend towards Stonehouse, Victor saw 
the slender, dark-robed figure clearly outlined in the warm evening light. 
Spot and Rex, a young kangaroo dog, bounded to meet him with the 
animation of dawning friendship. Their mistress also greeted him with 
a smile. 

“You are quite loaded, and yet Rex ran to meet you! That shows 
he quite approves of you,” she said, as she patted Rex on the head. 

“ Doesn’t he like people who carry things, then ?” asked Victor, put- 
ting his boxes on the little wicker table that stood near. 

“ No ; because, you see, most of the people he used to see with any 
kind of load were sundowners.” 

“ Perhaps he knew somehow that these boxes hold something for you,” 
said Victor, coloring a little as he bent over the boxes, undoing the 
strings. 

“ For me ?” said Doris, with a little note of incredulous surprise in her 
voice. 

“ Yes, if you will kindly accept them.” 

And now the lids were oiff both the boxes, and the light layer of white 
cotton-wool removed. And lo ! in the first box at which Doris looked 
there was the most enchanting array of w^hite, fragrant fiowers : feathery 
sprays of white lilac, clusters of white Indian musk-roses, of the white, fairy 
and exquisite Niphetos roses ; white heliotrope and picotees, tuberoses 
with their perfumed waxen buds, clustered sprays of stephanotis with 
their delicate yet penetrating fragrance. In the centre there was a group 
of magnificent orchids, pure white petalled, with yellow and mauve la- 
bell um. The flowers had been skilfully packed, their stems wrapped 
round in wet moss, so that they bore little trace of their journey. But 
a drooping petal here and there made Victor apologize for not having 
brought them to Stonehouse as soon as the mail came in. 

“ I will bring up the next lot the moment they come, and then they 
will last longer,” he said, eager to say something that would carry off 
the keen emotion visible in Doris’s face. She had seen no flowers since 
she had left Ouranie, and the sight and perfume of these, awakening so 
many chords of memory, moved her almost too much for speech. 

“ You got these lovely, lovely flowers for me I They must have come 
hundreds of miles,” she said in a tremulous voice when she could trust 
herself to speak. 


THE SILENT SEA 


167 


“ Oh, yes, it is really nothing, you know. You just mention to some 
one in town you want a few flowers,” said Victor with a tincture of men- 
dacity of which he was not often guilty. And then he took the folds of 
cotton- wool off the flowers in the second box, talking so as to give Doris 
time to recover herself. 

“These are not so fatigued-looking; you see they have more color. 

I really know hardly anything about flowers, except roses. These are 
the Catherine Mermets. I know them by the sweet scent ; my mother 
likes them very much. This, I suppose, is an orchid.” 

It was a Cattleya with deep rosy-crimson labellum and pink pet- 
als. This second boxful was little less lovely than the other. The La 
France, Malmaison, and Gloire - de - Dijon roses were superb. There 
was a wealth of daphne pouring its poignantly sweet fragrance on 
the air, and a great crowd of pansies, carnations, and yellow Austrian 
briars. 

“ Shall I go and ask Shung-Loo to get some basins and water for you 
to put them in ?” said Victor, who, after seeing Doris stealthily kissing a 
plume of white lilac with quivering lips, cast about for some excuse to 
leave her alone with the flowers. 

“ Ohj please do not trouble ! I can ring for him after I have looked 
at them a little longer,” she answered, taking up one flower after the 
other, with a caress in every touch and look. Then, after a little pause, 
“ I cannot say how grateful I am for your kindness ! I have been long- 
ing for flowers more than I can tell ; it sounds foolish to say thank 
you—” 

“ Yes ; because the pleasure they give is more thanks than enough !” 
said Victor eagerly. 

“ But I hope they are not all for me,” she said a little hesitatingly. 

“Yes, certainly; to do what you like with them.” 

“ But I would sooner you gave half to Mrs. Challoner and Euphemia. 
We can divide them ;” and with that Doris began to mix the white and 
colored flowers. 

“ You are too unselfish ; you know you like white flowers the best,” 
said Victor, who stood watching her. 

“ Well, you see, I am keeping a larger share of the white lilac,” said 
Doris, who fixed a spray of these flowers at her throat, and then made 
an equal division of the rest. “ When I wrote letters at Ouranie I used 
to date them by the flowers that were coming out. If I were going to 
write a letter to-night, I should date it ‘the day of all the flowers.’ 
Now, I am going to tell Mrs. Challoner and Euphemia that there is some- 
thing too wonderful — as if a fairy had come — only you are rather too 
big for a fairy.” 

“Yes, I’m afraid my weight is against me in that line. You had 


168 


THE SILENT SEA 


better say a sundowner — one of the kind that a dog of good sense, like 
Rex, can tolerate.” 

Well, whatever name might be applied to the giver, there could be no 
difference of opinion as to the extreme pleasure the flowers gave. Mrs. 
Challoner, who was easily moved to enthusiasm for her kind, found a 
depth of friendly thoughtfulness in the offering which increased the 
good-will she already bore towards Victor. Even the placid Challoner 
was moved to unusual enthusiasm, when, on being invited to spend the 
evening in the drawing-room, he saw the lovely multitude of flowers, set 
out in the old china and fine cut-glass bowls, to the number of a score or 
so. They were ranged on the bookcases, the little tables, the piano, and 
mantel-piece, giving the room that air of glad tranquillity which it is the 
privilege of beautiful flowers to impart. 

“I must sit where I can look at these roses, my dear, while I am 
waiting for you to let me checkmate you,” he said to his wife as they 
sat down for their usual games of chess, while the young people played, 
Victor accompanying Doris on his violin in some of Moore’s melodies, 
with which they were both familiar. Then, when Euphemia went away 
to finish one of those endless letters to her brother and “ a friend,” 
which she seemed always to have on stock, Victor, noticing a reversi- 
board, ventured to ask Doris if he might play a game with her. But 
though the game was entered upon with much seriousness by Doris, the 
contest very soon lagged. In fact, no two-handed game has yet been 
invented whose rules prevent this, when the one who humbly asks an- 
other to play does so for the express and perfidious purpose of an unin- 
terrupted talk. 

“ I have been wondering,” said Victor, after a few moves, whether 
you know anything more about the Gooloos than you told me the other 
day.” 

A wistful little smile passed over Doris’s face. 

I used to fable a great deal about Gooloos and other queer little 
people, when I was a child. But, of course, it is foolish when one is 
grown up.” 

I wish you would fancy that I am not grown up.” 

“ I can hardly do that — seeing I have to look up when I speak to you. 
I might, perhaps, fancy that you are not too wise to care for such things.” 

Victor laughed involuntarily, then checked his mirth, and said, 

“ Who are the other queer little people ?” 

“ Oh, Shapes and Yangs. Shapes are always flying and changing ; 
but Yangs would sooner die than change, and they never wish to fly. 
They just want grass, and the sun on their backs. If they went into 
society, perhaps you would call them pigs. No, I don’t think I shall 
tell you any more, I can see you think my little people very silly,” said 


I'HE SlLENl^ SEA 


169 


Doris, noticing that Victor was trying in vain to repress the amusement 
afforded by the characteristics of the Yangs. 

“ I don’t think them silly at all ; they are very amusing. I wonder 
how you came to think of such things.” 

“ Didn’t you make up stories to yourself when you were little ?” 

“ No, not much. I used to read other people’s stories, and play a great 
deal.” 

“ Ah, you had other children to play with ; I had no playmates but 
myself. I used often to play at having a brother. He was so grand 
and brave. He was a great soldier, and used to go to the Holy Land 
and make the infidels give up the prisoners. When we went out driving 
I used to ask my mother to let the ponies go very fast, and then I used 
to fancy that I was Richard, on his Arab horse, chasing dragons and 
going after savage people.” 

“ Then, was he always away at the wars ?” 

‘‘ No, he sometimes came home and told me where he had been, and 
what strange things he had seen. I used to live under a nectarine-tree 
in the garden, and watch for him to come across the sea — that was Gau- 
wari, our big lake ; it bordered the garden on one side. But I used to 
like best to ride and drive in the direction of the great plain. I could 
fancy always such wonderful things about that, for it was like a great, 
strange sea — so gray and wide and quiet. Mother and I always called it 
the Silent Sea ; but now that I am in the midst of it — ” 

She ended with a little sigh. 

‘‘ It is very bare and desolate, and nothing very wonderful in it, except 
that it is such a huge plain and reaches so far,” said Victor, who was 
listening to these revelations of a solitary childhood with the keenest 
interest. 

“ I am afraid things are often like that,” she responded thoughtfully. 
‘‘ When we used to visit Mrs. Seaton, the girls had a brother, and he was 
not in the least noble or chivalrous. He was greedy about tarts, and 
sometimes pulled his sisters’ hair.” 

“ But, on the other hand, there are many things quite as beautiful as 
we can imagine them.” 

“Ah, yes! The ‘Arabian Nights’ are quite poor compared to what 
is going on all the time. Even among the grass, where a tiny brown 
seed swells and pushes up a thin little green lance ; and by-and-by it is 
a feathery tassel, shivering if you even whisper near it. . . . Often when 
Kenneth used to speak so much about heaven, and say it was a great- 
deal more beautiful than this world, I used to wonder whether there are 
corners there where the violets come out early, and where one might put 
down an old fairy-book with its face against the canary lavender, to 
watch the white-eyebrowed swallows when they come the first day.” 


170 


THE SILENT SEA 


There was a wistful thrill in the girl’s voice, but she spoke more rap- 
idly than was her wont, and with the animation a deeper tinge of color 
stole into her cheeks. 

I do not believe you were lonely at all, though you had no play- 
mates,” said Victor, after a little pause. 

‘‘ I did not want any one else when I had mother,” she answered in a 
very low voice. 

And then there was silence between them for a little. The flowers 
poured their sweetness on the air, and through the open windows, with 
the curtains half drawn back, the moonshine was visible, lying over the 
great Silent Sea that hemmed them round with that mystic light which 
gives a magic of its own to the barest landscape. 

“We are not getting on very well with our game, are we?” she said 
after a little, and on this Victor tried his best to lose his counters. But 
it was little he could think of anything just then, except the sweep of 
those heavy lashes and the wonderful eyes they revealed when they were 
uplifted ; the sweet cadence of her tones, and that enchanting mixture 
in her talk of bright, Ariel fancies and direct, child-like simplicity. Alto- 
gether, that evening was formed of those supreme, fugitive hours which, 
once flown, seldom have a to-morrow. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

On the following Saturday morning the mail-man brought Victor two 
more boxes of flowers. These he sent across at once to Stonehouse by 
Mick, and then went to the post-office for the mine letters, as was his 
custom each morning, half an hour after the mail had been delivered. As 
he walked leisurely along, smoking a cigarette, he gave himself up to the 
pleasure of imagining Doris’s delight on finding one of these boxes en- 
tirely filled with white and Parma violets. He pictured her to himself 
bending over these, holding them to her face, talking to them, kissing 
them. . . . His cigarette went out and he threw it away, hastening his steps 
with that rapt expression on his face, and that unseeing look in his eyes, 
which tell of entire abstraction from the objects visible to material sight. 

He still in some fashion kept up the fiction to himself, that his feel- 
ings were of the most benevolent and disinterested friendship. But in 
the midst of his happy, engrossing thoughts this morning, he became 
conscious of an inner voice struggling to ask him questions. None are 
so deaf, however, as those who won’t hear. But it may be taken for 
granted that a week is the utmost limit of time during which one can 


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171 


be happy under false pretences. Among the letters that Victor received 
was a bulky one from Miss Paget. At sight of it he drew a long breath, 
and capitulated to the inward monitor, without even attempting to make 
terms. It was on last Sunday he sent away his reply to Helen’s pre- 
vious letter. Not a line had he written to her since ; how often had he 
thought of her? What dreams and visions and reveries, on the other 
hand, had been with him day and night of a certain face and form ! 
How constantly the thrilling tones of a low, sweet voice had been in his 
ears ! 

“ But what else could happen, after once seeing Doris ?” he asked him- 
self helplessly. The bare thought of her prevented him from being as 
unhappy as he felt he ought to be; for the longer he looked at Miss 
Paget’s letter the more clear it became that he had made a frightful mis- 
take in supposing that he loved her. Perhaps she knew, perhaps that 
was why she put off their engagement — after all, they were not engaged. 
The relief he found in this thought made him feel ashamed of himself. 
He took refuge in trying to think of something else. There was that 
cave room he was to search on Monday ; whether it contained treasure 
or not, it would make the subject of a long letter to Helen. He could 
tell her about his first meeting Vansittart, and the comical interview be- 
tween him and Trevaskis. . . . “Even if at the end of the probation 
appointed by Helen ” — here Victor paused, and then, with the felicity of 
his father’s race, he put the point — “ we neither of us wish to make our 
friendship into an engagement, we shall still remain friends — I am sure 
of it. I must not send a miserable, scrappy letter in answer to one like 
this.” 

He went into the manager’s office with his letters and papers. 

“ I suppose I can begin my search of the underground room on Mon- 
day, as we arranged,” he said. 

Trevaskis had opened one of his letters. He read it rapidly, and said 
in a hurried voice, “ I half expected this ; I am called away on urgent 
private business. I must telegraph to the secretary at once. Will you 
kindly take this message across to the telegraph- office for me ?” 

He got a form and wrote : “ Called away on urgent private business ; 
forced to apply for a week’s leave of absence, dating from Monday. 
Please reply at once.” 

In less than two hours a reply came, granting the leave asked for. 
Trevaskis was in the purser’s oflSce, talking to Roby and Victor, when the 
telegram was handed to him. 

“ There is a man near Malowie I have to see,” he was saying to Roby. 
“ Do you know whether the train stays half an hour or so at that sta- 
tion ?” 

“ Iss, it’s the change o’ gauge, cap’en.” 


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Trevaskis glanced over his telegram, and then a sudden thought seemed 
to strike him. 

I could be sure of finding him at home on Saturday night. ... I 
ought to have applied for my leave from to-day, really.” 

“ Oh, as for the matter o’ that, what be the differ, shouldst ’ee leave 
to-day or Sunday a’ternoon ?” 

“Then if I went by the second train, the one that only goes to Ma- 
lowie, I could catch it this afternoon ?” 

“Oh, sure ’nough, the mail-coach gets in half an hour before she 
parts.” 

“ That’s what I’ll do, then,” said Trevaskis in a tone of sudden deter- 
mination. “Just send word to the mail-driver to call round, will you, 
Roby ? I don’t think there’s anything else to arrange about during my 
absence besides what we’ve gone over.” 

“ Oh, everything will be all right, cap’en. You see, I’m used to bein’ 
left in charge at a hour’s notice. I’ve had a many year practice at it,” 
said Roby, with his large smile as he went out. 

Trevaskis discussed one or two business matters with Victor. Then, 
as he was going away, he said in the careless tone in which one speaks 
of an indifferent matter, “ Oh, and, by the way, the search business had 
better stand over till I come back.” 

“ Just as you wish, captain,” answered Victor, who was in reality not 
very much engrossed by the affair. 

Trevaskis had studied every move beforehand, taking precautions 
against each contingency, by giving himself a wider margin of time. He 
had chosen Malowie as the station at which he would get out, because 
there the crush of people and the hurry and bustle of changing carriages 
made any chance encounter less dangerous. On reaching this station, he 
took the carpet-bag containing the gold and the disguise out of his port- 
manteau. The latter he booked to go on by the early Monday train. It 
was some time before 'he could get even this simple detail attended to. 
The rush to Broombush Creek, which had subsided for a day or two, had 
now assumed phenomenal proportions. Gold had been discovered in 
large quantities over a wide area, several nuggets weighing over sixty and 
seventy ounces. And there were the usual sensational rumors of even 
larger nuggets, whose lucky finders were not anxious to spread the news 
of their good fortune. More than seven hundred men were on their way 
to Nilpeena by the train that would reach it on Sunday morning. The 
railway people were unprepared for so unprecedented a crush of passen- 
gers, in addition to the ordinary numbers, and the platform and offices 
presented a solid mass of excited, struggling, noisy men, each one fight- 
ing for himself. A rumor had spread that the carriage accommodation 
was insufficient, and the confusion that ensued was indescribable. 


THE SILENT SEA 


1^73 


Trevaskis saw several faces he knew in the thick of the crowd, but 
they did not notice him, and he did not speak to any one. He breathed 
more freely when he got away from the railway station. He took a 
short cut through the township, and walked on rapidly till he reached a 
creek thickly lined with ti-tree, two miles and a half away from Malowie, 
in an easterly direction. Here he assumed his disguise, beginning with 
his clothes. He put on a dark, loose, earth-stained pair of trousers over 
those he wore ; he took off the coat he had on, put it into the carpet- 
bag, and in place of it wore a long, shabby dust-coat. Then he lay down, 
making a pillow of his carpet-bag. He dozed fitfully for a couple of 
hours. As soon as- daylight reddened the east, he fixed a pocket look- 
ing-glass in the fork of a tree, and performed the more delicate shades 
of his toilet. He put his soft silk beaver in the carpet-bag, and wore 
instead an old gray hat, with a slouching brim, which he pulled well over 
his eyes, and knotted a large red silk handkerchief round his throat. 
When he looked at himself, with his brick-red complexion, his straggling 
gray hair falling over his neck, his thick, grizzled moustache and long, sil- 
very beard, he could not repress a triumphant exclamation of pleasure. 
All that remained for him to do now was to transform the carpet-bag 
into a swag. He took out a little black billy, one which he had found 
in one of the store-rooms and blackened over an impromptu fire of deal 
boards in his room on the previous night, and a thin, brownish-red rug 
which he had rolled round the gold. He got a slender piece of wood 
the length of the carpet-bag, which he folded within it, so as to stiffen 
the outline. He tied up the whole in the rug, turning in the edges well 
over the bag, and strapped the swag with an old saddle-strap at each end. 
Then he fastened a loose cord between the two, and slipped the swag 
over his shoulders, carrying the billy in one hand in orthodox tramp 
fashion. 

He struck across country till he gained the high-road, and followed it 
on to the second railway station beyond Malowie, and twelve miles dis- 
tant therefrom. He chose this rather than the nearer station, partly to 
pass the time, and partly because he wanted to have a good long tramp, 
so as to get the dust well into his boots and face and clothes. As there 
was a high easterly breeze, with a strong touch of hot wind, this pur- 
pose was well effected by the time he reached Kilmeny. It was a strag- 
gling little township, its chief features being a big flour-mill and two 
public-houses. He went to the one nearest the railway station, a shabby, 
one-story building, in which no one seemed to be astir, though it was 
now close on eight o’clock. The only inmate visible was the landlord, a 
big, fat man, who was shambling about the house in an aimless and dis- 
couraged manner. He was keeping house, he said, and didn’t know 
where the things were kept very well. He offered Trevaskis brandy and 


THE SILENT SEA 


lU 

water and cold beef and bread for breakfast, adding, “ Every soul ’bout 
the place has gone off to the diggings except my wife, who was confined 
of two twinses a couple of days ago, and a female cook likewise down 
with the mumps.” 

But Trevaskis would touch no stimulant. 

I want no speerits ; if ye can’t give me a dish o’ decent tay I med as 
well be goin’ to th’ next house,” he said in a gruff voice, with an unmis- 
takable Cornish accent. 

On this the landlord bustled into the kitchen, and in twenty minutes 
brought him a teapot full of tea. 

One o’ they cross-grained old Cousin Jackses as go mouching alone 
for gold,” said the landlord, speaking of Trevaskis to a customer who 
had dropped in for an early “phlegm-cutter.” “You can see by the 
look of him he’s been living alone somewheres like a wombat, till he has 
got out o’ the way of havin’ even a proper Christian drink. I remem- 
ber — ” 

His reminiscences were cut short by the sound of a bell forcibly rung. 
Trevaskis had finished his breakfast, and now ordered a bedroom. As 
soon as he was shown into one, he locked the door, took off his wig and 
beard, put his swag under the bed, and, throwing himself on it in his 
clothes, he was fast asleep in a few minutes. He slept till sunset, and 
then rose and had another nondescript sort of meal, in the course of 
which the landlord entertained him with anecdotes of the “ twinses” and 
the sudden exodus of more than half the male population of Kilmeny 
for the new diggings. 

“ It’s close to that there Colmar Mine, as is so celybrated for ’anky- 
panky tricks,” he said, and then, without receiving any encouragement 
from his listener, he launched into a description of some of the more no- 
torious episodes in connection with the Colmar. “They get managers 
there up to all the tricks going for to line their own pocketses. They 
say they’ve got hold of a very straight man this, time, but that wicious 
in his temper — he gives the chaps the rumbles for a day and a ’arf with 
slanging of ’em.” 

Trevaskis cut short this pleasing picture of himself by asking for his 
account, including bed and breakfast ; he paid it, and then, having se- 
cured the window and locked the door of his bedroom, he went out for 
a stroll. He passed a little wooden chapel, through whose open door 
and windows the sound of a powerful voice was plainly audible. The 
wind had fallen, and the twilight hush was unbroken, except for that 
deep, resonant voice. As Trevaskis leaned against a post-and-rail fence, 
smoking, close to the side of the chapel, the preaching man’s message 
reached him word for word : 

“ When the devil wants to get hold of you,” he said, “ he don’t come 


THE SILENT SEA 


175 


all hoof and claws, a-butting his horns into you, and driving you head- 
foremost into crime. No ; at first he takes slim liberties, so to speak, 
and they are so like something you’ve been doing before, you don’t find 
it out all at once. Then, after a bit, you do something shadier than 
before — still, not so very black ; and you feel sorry about it when you 
lie awake at nights. But by and by you get over that, and you go on 
and on, till — ” Here the preacher dropped his voice impressively, and 
Trevaskis went on his way with a hot, deep fiush surging up into his 
face, under the swarthy dye that was part of his disguise. 

He had in early life been intimately associated with an ardent section 
of the Cornish Primitive Methodists, who dwell on every incident of in- 
dividual life as a special act of over-ruling Providence. At this mo- 
ment, old associations returned to him, with all the vividness that char- 
acterizes the early impressions of a strong and tenacious nature, whose 
forces have for the most part been concentrated in a narrow groove. 
Ideas had played so small a part in his adult life, that those which had 
been early implanted in his mind slumbered there as hard, and clear, and 
unmodified as in the days in which he had first assimilated them. 

“ It is a warning — as sure as God is in heaven — it is a warning sent to 
me,” he said over and over to himself, striding on he knew not whither. 
Year by year his past life unrolled itself before him, and he saw as by a 
lightning fiash of quickened observation the steps by which he had 
been gradually familiarized with dishonest practices. As a boy of four- 
teen, he had in working on tribute with his father come to learn by ex- 
perience that cheating, when practicable without detection, was reckoned 
no disgrace, among a large proportion of miners. Even some of those 
who held forth as class-leaders and local preachers would, when the op- 
portunity arose, act without scruple on the maxim, “ Fear God and cheat 
the company.” He himself, since he had come to man’s estate, had 
little qualms in over-reaching his fellow-men, in grasping at a larger 
share of profits in mining work, or mining speculation, than rightly be- 
longed to him. But never before had he been concerned in any act 
that would, if unveiled to other men, have placed him on the list of 
criminals. Now he seemed vaguely to perceive that his previous life 
had been an insidious preparation for crime ; that at the critical moment 
the avarice of a lifetime, intensified by poverty, made the opportunity 
of being rich by secret theft an irresistible temptation. 

“ Then after a bit you do something shadier than before ... by and 
by you get over that, and you go on and on till — ” That blank, which 
his mind involuntarily invested with a sombre fascination, daunted him 
more than the most voluble catalogue of crimes. His disguise, which 
at dawn of day had given him a sensation of gratified triumph, seemed 
to him in the gathering twilight as ignominious as convict chains. “ I’ll 


176 


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sling up the whole affair — yes, I’ll sling up the whole affair,” he re- 
peated to himself at intervals, with the iteration usual with him when 
deeply moved. 

Night fell, and a luminous space of silvery light in the sky heralded 
the moon’s rising. He found himself on the outskirts of the township, 
near a cottage with a little garden in front full of flowers. The win- 
dows were wide open, and he saw by the lamp-light in the room within 
a quiet family group. The mother with an infant in her arms, the 
father with a large book and two or three children grouped round him, 
an older girl seated at a harmonium playing a hymn tune. Presently 
she began to sing, in a sweet though untrained voice, “ Shall we gather 
at the river ?” and the younger children clustered round her and joined 
in. Then the father stood up, and his deep bass gave body to the clear, 
high treble of the children’s voices. It was all as commonplace as the 
light of heaven. But to Trevaskis, in the awakened forecasting state of 
his imagination, it all seemed part of a plan by which he was led to re- 
view his deeds before it was too late. The man in there sang peace- 
fully with his children, while he skulked about, disguised like one who 
had shed blood — no, he would go no further on this path, whose begin- 
ning was a theft, whose end no man could foresee. 

What should he do with the gold while he went on to town ? But 
now, the moment he began to consider how he should relinquish it, the 
love of this thing stirred his heart with a deep, masterful yearning. The 
thought of resigning it to other hands filled him with vindictive jealousy. 
It was not as if it could be handed over to the rightful owner. Proba- 
bly it would be claimed by the government, and what would govern- 
ment do with it ? Squander it, as they had squandered millions before, 
on foolish railways to nowhere, through desert country, on crooked jet- 
ties from which to load wheat that would not be grown, on marble 
staircases and Persian carpets for fancy viceregal country-houses. Could 
not he make a better use than that of it — he who had lost his hard- 
earned thousands through the knavish duplicity of other men ? He had 
wronged no one by taking this gold . . and he had gone too far to 
retreat. As for the remaining store of gold, that clearly belonged to 
the company. 

But if I take this. I’ll be sure to struggle somehow for the rest. 
Twenty thousand pounds is a fortune; but as for two or three thousand 
. . . I’ve had a warning — I’ve had a warning. What made me come 
away and leave the gold there under the bed, and stop by that little 
chapel and listen to the way the devil tempts and tempts a man to the 
very brink of hell ?” He stood on the brow of a little hill beyond the 
confines of the township, whose lights gleamed here and there through 
open doors and windows. The tinkle of a bullock-bell or two in the 


THE SILENT SEA 


111 


distance was the only sound that broke the profound calm, while in the 
heart of this solitary man raged a tempest of conflicting thoughts and 
desires. 

All around, as far as the eye could travel, lay small habitations of 
wood and iron, in the midst of wide wheat-fields, where the crops were 
stunted and meagre with the long-continued drought. Three or four 
weeks back, prayer for rain had been offered in all the churches through- 
out the colony ; but as yet no rain of any consequence had fallen, and 
in this northern region much of the wheat must perish in the ear. Think- 
ing over this, Trevaskis asked himself what reason there was for believing 
that Heaven was really much concerned with the conduct of human affairs. 

As the impulse towards right-doing had been awakened by material 
fears, so the reascendency of the strongest motives that swayed his nat- 
ure was strengthened by like tawdry misconceptions of spiritual influ- 
ences. And yet he did not revert to his former purpose without a fur- 
ther effort at resistance. 

“ It is close on nine o’clock now,” he said, looking at his watch in 
the soft, bright moonlight. “ I won’t go back to the public-house till 
near twelve ; the publican will before then make sure I’m not returning, 
and he has, of course, a master-key to open the locked door. Well, if 
he or any one else has found that gold, he can keep it. I’ll ask no 
question, or hold up my finger, but take it as a proof that what I heard 
to-night was not a chance, but a warning and a sign from above.” 

He passed part of the time resting against the trunk of a gum-tree, 
part in striding about and watching light after light disappear in the 
houses as the inmates retired to rest. Sometimes he was overpowered 
with dread lest the gold might be discovered and tampered with, and 
again he found himself hoping that it might be all stolen. . . . “ They 
say they’ve got hold of a very straight man this time.” The words 
came back to him mockingly again and again. He had always prided 
himself on his reputation for integrity. To hear the estimate in which 
he was popularly held thus spoken of by an entire stranger, in a remote 
little township, curiously quickened his determination, once this trip 
was accomplished, to run all risks rather than that of detection. 

Within the last day or two he had sometimes thought out the plan 
of removing all the great jars of amalgam into his bedroom, while Fitz- 
Gibbon searched the cave room — of making some excuse to Roby’s wife, 
who came daily to tidy up his rooms, and dispense with her services 
while the treasure was in them. But from the first the risks daunted 
him. Now, during the hours of his self-imposed vow, he reviewed all 
the mishaps that might lead to detection if he took the stolen amalgam 
into his actual possession on the mine. He reflected that both Webster 
and Dunning had, under the most disastrous circumstances, been saved 
12 


178 


THE SILENT SEA 


from being found out, by keeping their booty hidden in the cave room. 
As he slowly pondered over these things, he bound himself by a solemn 
resolution, in the name of his wife and children, that he would not allow 
any consideration to tempt him to remove the gold from its hiding-place 
till he could take it entirely away from the mine. 

“After all that has happened in connection with the Colmar, in the 
way of murder, insanity, and sudden death. I’d rather let the young 
jackanapes go down and discover the lot than fill my room with stolen 
stuff,” he thought. “ But, no, no ! as sure as my name is William Tre- 
vaskis. I’ll find some means or another of keeping his nose outside that 
iron wall until I’ve turned the gray stuff into bars of yellow gold, and 
carried them safe away.” 

So, after all his impulses of repentance, remorse, and fear, these were 
the thoughts that filled the mine manager’s mind as he returned to the 
inn. When he examined his nuggets by the light of a scrap of tallow 
candle, flaring in a dirty tin candlestick, and found them untouched, 
the thought floated dimly through his brain that the best result of his 
hearing part of a sermon in that little wooden chapel had been, that in 
those solitary hours in the tranquil moonlight he had perceived how 
foolish and dangerous one of the plans was which had occurred to him 
regarding the stolen treasure in the cave room. 


CHAPTER XXIIL 

The train passed through Kilmeny at half-past eight in the morning. 
Ten minutes before it came in Trevaskis bought a third-class ticket to 
Adelaide. There were several men in the compartment he entered, two 
of them miners, who had come down from Broken Hill. One of these 
Trevaskis recognized as a man he had discharged from the Colmar Mine 
three weeks previously for insubordination. He was an inveterate talker, 
whether at work or play, and kept up his reputation on this occasion 
with unstinted energy. His companion was much more reticent, and 
responded for the most part by an occasional grunt. On one topic, 
however, the silent miner was moved to express himself with confident 
vigor. This subject was the mine in which he had been working, one 
that had of late risen high in popular favor. 

“ Pay dividends, indeed !” he exclaimed scornfully. “ Not for a 
couple of years to come. There’s too much lead and too little silver, 
and that will soon be well known. Mark my words, the shares will be 
down with a bang before you’re two weeks older.” 


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179 


Trevaskis, leaning back in a corner of the compartment next one of 
the windows, with his slouched hat pulled well over his face, seemed to 
have fallen fast asleep soon after he got into the carriage. But these 
observations regarding Block Twenty were not thrown away on him. 
He did not utter a word, and hardly changed his position during the 
course of the journey. 

It wanted a few minutes to one when the train stopped at Bowden- 
on-the-Hill. This is within a quarter of an hour’s walk of Hindmarsh. 
Trevaskis made for the railway-station there, and asked one of the guards 
the nearest way to Bendigo Row. The man asked in what street. This 
Trevaskis did not know, only that it was near the railway-station. 

‘‘ Hi, young shaver, come here !” cried the guard to a lad of nine or 
ten, who was dawdling about the platform. ‘‘Do you know where 
Bendigo Row is 

Yes, the boy knew. Gussy Heinemann’s mother lived there. Then 
Trevaskis told him if he showed him the way he would give him six- 
pence, and, thanking the guard, he followed his guide. They crossed a 
street, and went up another for a few minutes in a westerly direction till 
they came to a narrow lane. The first row of little stone cottages was 
Bendigo Row. 

“There’s isn’t nobody living there,” said the boy, when Trevaskis 
stood at the door of No. 4. 

“ I know that,” said Trevaskis, fumbling in his pocket for the key. 
“ This is my house just now, though I didn’t quite know where it was. 
And if you want to earn another sixpence, you can wait here a little and 
show me the way to the branch of the National Bank that’s in Hindmarsh.” 

The boy assented with a joyful grin. As a matter of fact, the bank 
was almost within sight. Five minutes later Trevaskis was inside it, 
waiting to see the manager, having left all that the carpet-bag contained 
in No. 4, except the gold. He found only a youth in charge, who 
looked wonderingly at the hairy-faced old Bushman when he asked to 
see the manager in a gruff Cornish voice, and replying laconically, 
“ Won’t be in for a quarter of an hour,” resumed his work at a tall 
desk. It was evidently the slack time of the day, for no other customer 
came in while Trevaskis waited. He sat at a little ink-stained table on 
a stiff leathern chair, trying to read the daily newspaper that lay before 
him. But now that his journey was over, and his purpose so nearly ac- 
complished, an indescribable feeling of uneasiness took possession of 
him. For the first time the thought flashed across him that Dunning, 
for aught he knew, might have used the disguise he now wore in dis- 
posing of gold at this very bank. He felt tempted to go away without 
waiting for the manager, and walk across to one of the North Adelaide 
branch banks. 


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But as he was on the point of acting on this the manager returned. 

“You buy gold, I suppose?” he said shortly, putting his bag on the 
counter. 

“ Yes, anything up to a ton,” answered the manager jocosely. “ Have 
you come down from the Broombush Creek diggings?” he added, as 
Trevaskis opened the carpet-bag. 

But to this the silvery-bearded Bushman made no reply. He took 
out the nuggets one after the other, without pausing or taking any no- 
tice of the wondering admiration of the manager and his clerk. 

“ I make it five hundred an’ forty bounces,” he said briefiy, when the 
whole lay in a yellow, glistening heap on the counter. 

On being weighed and tested, the gold was found to be a few penny- 
weights over this. 

“ I expect you were in the field some time before this rush took 
place ?” said the manager, looking at Trevaskis narrowly. 

“ Don’t ’ee fret about me, sir, but do ’ee just figure out ’ow much this 
coom to at three pound, eighteen shillings, and sixpence a bounce,” an- 
swered Trevaskis, on which the manager laughed, and put him down as 
a regular old Cornish digger, of the bluff, outspoken type. 

“Do you consider it so pure as to be worth that much?” he said, 
turning over a large nugget specked here and there with quartz. 

“ I knows it ; but ef you’re in any doubt — ” 

“ I’ll give you three pounds, eighteen shillings an ounce.” 

“ Well, I’m pushed for time. I make you a gift o’ the sixpennies,” 
answered Trevaskis curtly. 

“ How will you take the money ?” 

“ One hundred twenty-pound notes — the rest in fivers and silver.” 

Trevaskis counted over the notes with slow deliberation, and then 
crushed them into an inner pocket in the carpet-bag, nodded brusquely 
to the manager, and walked away. When he got into the sunlight and 
the fresh air, he was astonished to feel a momentary sensation of numb- 
ness creeping over him. It was the lassitude of excessive fatigue, of 
which he had until then been unconscious. There was a ragged-looking 
little square near, with seats here and there under the trees. He sat on 
one of these, and for a little time he revelled in a drowsy, luxurious feel- 
ing, in which weariness and a sense of triumphant success were curiously 
mingled. All his limbs ached with fatigue, and his eyes felt so heavy 
that he could scarcely keep them open. Yet all the time the blood was 
coursing swiftly in his veins, and his heart was beating vehemently. 
There was plenty of time for him to rest and indulge in the myriad 
plans that floated hazily through his mind. The evening train, by which 
he would be supposed to have come, did not reach town till nine, or 
after. 


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181 


But the day did not seem long to him. On the way back to No. 4 he 
passed a little general store, at which he bought some tea and sugar, a 
loaf of bread, a mug, and half a pound of butter. He gathered up some 
chips and sticks in the little back-yard, got a billy full of water from the 
tap, and made himself some tea. 

As he sat eating and drinking in his curious solitude, in the dim light 
he admitted by half opening one of the shutters, his eye suddenly fell on 
some gilt lettering on the mug he had bought. He read the words, 

“ For a good boy,” and suddenly burst into loud laughter. Yet the next 
moment the grotesque irony of the thing made him reflect with quick- 
ened perception on the contrast between his secret actions and the place 
he held in the world’s regard. A justice of the peace, an ex-member of 
Parliament, the son-in-law of a leading doctor — what could this man 
have to do with a vagabond skulking about in disguise, disposing of 
stolen gold? 

The thought came home to him still more acutely when he sat at 
breakfast next morning with his wife and children. He had managed 
everything without a slip. Strolling across from Hindmarsh on the 
previous night, he reached the Adelaide rail way -station just as the 
northern train came in, and, mingling with the throng of passengers, he 
in a few minutes obtained his portmanteau, and placed the carpet-bag in 
one of its compartments as he drove to his own house in a cab. 

Zoo won’t do away no moe, pappy, will zoo ?” said a blonde-headed 
little boy of three, who was mounted beside him on a high chair. 

After all, would not that be best? — leave his weary, hateful exile at 
the mine, and put this money, of which he thought now in its hiding- 
place with a sort of abhorrence, into a decent-sized farm near town, and 
work the land for a living, like an honest man who had no cause to be 
ashamed in the presence of his prattling little ones. As he looked over 
the morning paper he noticed a place which he knew well advertised to 
be let on easy terms. A farm of two hundred acres, with a large or- 
chard and orangery, and a comfortable eight-roomed house, a few miles 
beyond Norwood. He determined to go and have a look at the property 
in the course of a day or two. 

After breakfast he went to the Exchange with his bundle of notes, sub- * 
divided in a roomy pocket-book. He had explained to his wife, on ar- 
riving, that it was business connected with the share market which had 
suddenly brought him to town. 

I hope you will make a lot of money out of it, whatever it is,” she 
now said, as he went out, with that vague belief in the money-making 
power of shares universal in communities largely bitten with gambling 
in mines. 

People are making such a lot of money on ’Change lately,” added 


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Mrs. Trevaskis, in the regretful tone of one who has been on the losing 
side. There is Winny Berger^s husband, who helped to float a silver 
company at Beltana. He made over three thousand pounds, and now 
the shares are worth absolutely nothing. Winny was so awfully de- 
lighted about his selling out just at the right moment. She ordered a 
dress from Worth, and has gone to the Melbourne Cup.” 

‘‘I expect, my dear, the people who bought her husband’s worthless 
shares are not quite so pleased,” said Trevaskis, smiling rather sardoni- 
cally. 

“ Oh, well, that is their lookout,” answered his wife indifferently ; 
and then, with renewed vivacity, “ The Bergers are putting a new wing 
to their house — a ball-room and conservatory — I was over it the other 
day with Winny. The whole of this wretched little house would go in- 
side the ball-room.” 

‘‘ Well, ril consult Moses <fe Co. Perhaps they’ll put me in the way 
of jewing the public,” said Trevaskis as he went out. 

Whether he jewed the public much or little, the fact remained that 
before his week’s leave of absence expired Trevaskis had, by buying 
Block Twenties on Tuesday and selling them on Thursday, added £V00 
to his money. By this time he had abandoned all thought of the farm 
with the orchard and orangery. The bare mention of the project had 
filled his wife with disdainful horror. “ A farm ! a place with pigs and 
cows, and sunbonnets and bad seasons !” she ejaculated a little incoher- 
ently, as if the latter were a commodity laid on like gas or water wher- 
ever agriculture was concerned. It’s bad enough for you to be manag- 
ing a mine away from home,” she went on, and our furniture getting 
spoiled in this poky little house, with one general servant and an in- 
competent nurse ; but to go on a wretched bit of land, and sell apples 
and oranges — ” 

“You speak as though I had asked you to go round with a donkey- 
cart full of fruit and a pair of scales !” retorted Trevaskis, whose nerves 
had been so much strained by his recent experiences that he was unable 
to listen to his wife’s unreasoning querulousness with his accustomed 
forbearance. On this she burst into tears. She had been trying to bear 
up as well as she could, she said, in a voice broken with emotion. What 
with five young children and a small poky house of six rooms, where 
part of the furniture was being spoiled, and the rest ruined in a ware- 
house; with a general servant that invariably spoiled the gravy, and a 
young nurse who was always on the point of tipping the perambulator 
over ; and now on top of it all to be taunted in this way — and so forth, 
and so forth. 

“ She will never know a contented day again till we have a big house 
and servants and a carriage once more,” thought Trevaskis, and these 


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biting ambitions accorded but too well with his own. The addition 
made by his lucky investment in Block Twenties to the proceeds of the 
stolen gold merely served to strengthen his fixed determination to secure 
the rest of the hidden treasure. His thoughts were constantly reverting 
to this subject and to the obstacles that had to be surmounted. . . . He 
would have to work entirely by night in retorting the gold. As for dis- 
posing of it afterwards, he could not bear the thought of repeated jour- 
neys in the disguise he had first assumed. But he was now certain that 
the fortunes of the new diggings at Broombush Creek would offer an 
easy solution. The low reefs in the vicinity of the creek had been 
tested by experts, and found to contain gold in suflScient quantities to 
pay for crushing. Already four or five companies had been started, and 
the necessary plant was on the way to the diggings. Trevaskis was too 
familiar with the histories of gold-fields not to know that in a short 
time one or two of these companies would come to grief, and that the 
plant, etc., could be bought for less than half the cost. He could start 
working on his own account, and all the rest would be easy. A more 
serious obstacle now than the disposal of the gold was the arrangement 
he had made to let Fitz-Gibbon investigate the hiding-place. How could 
this be prevented without raising suspicion ? If he postponed the in- 
vestigation from time to time, the young man might, in sheer weari- 
ness, drop the project. Perhaps, after all, it occupied very little of his 
thoughts. 

But on the day before he left town he made a very unpleasant dis- 
covery, which still further complicated the situation. He was in the 
company’s office discussing various mining matters with the secretary, 
who said to him as he was leaving, 

‘‘ Ah, by the way, isn’t Mr. Fitz-Gibbon going to search some under- 
ground place for a pot of gold that some old fellow told him was to be 
found there?” 

‘‘ Yes, yes, we’re going to get a great fortune there,” answered Tre- 
vaskis, without a change of countenance, though his heart gave a great 
thump when he heard the words. 

“ Mr. Drummond, his uncle, had a letter from him the other day, in 
which he mentioned it. We’ve heard some rumors about that place be- 
fore. Yes, of course, there’s always yarns about mines one can’t believe. 
But Mr. Fitz-Gibbon will have plenty of time ; it seems he’ll remain till 
Christmas, after all. I didn’t believe he would stay there more than a 
month at the most.” 

“ He may or he may not stay till Christmas,” thought Trevaskis, as he 
left the office ; “ but at any rate, he don’t fossick about in that part of 
the old mine till I’ve secured the gold.” 

This, then, was the fixed purpose with which he returned to the mine. 


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The prize at stake was too precious to be foregone. To occupy a good 
position, to be above the necessity of work, to eat and drink well, to 
drive in a carriage, and have everything handsome,” is an ideal of life 
so ardently prized, so universally scrambled for, that, in its achievement, 
lying, cheating, hypocrisy of all kinds, robberies of every grade, are con- 
stantly enacted. It is by no means a new play. The cast has been on 
the world’s stage from time immemorial, the actors are perpetually re- 
newed, and the drama is now as popular at the Antipodes as it could 
ever have been in the Old World. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

Victor, after bidding Trevaskis good-by, as he climbed into the mail- 
coach that took him on the first stage of his journey to town, returned 
to the ofiice and read over that thick letter from Miss Paget, which had 
suddenly thrown a kind of gray light athwart certain rose-tinted illu- 
sions. It was a long, bright, pleasant letter, but perhaps, if it were re- 
ceived under the best auspices, there was too little in it that spoke to the 
heart. . . . Her father and Professor Codrington were just then ecstatic- 
ally happy over the rubbings of antique stones from some antediluvian 
quarry in a remote part of Asia. Among these rubbings they had dis- 
covered a new sort of metre ! Had she told Victor in her previous letter 
that among the residents of Colombo they had unexpectedly met a rela- 
tive — a young clergyman newly wedded? A gentle little cherub of a 
man, with big blue eyes and a dimple or two, who apologized for the 
decrees of Providence in two short sermons each Sunday, and for the 
usages of Anglo-Colomban society during the rest of the week. His 
bride had an inexhaustible trousseau — a new dress for every emergency 
of life ; and when there was no emergency at all, she looked all the more 
like a lyric out of a Parisian fashion-book — a pretty lyric, too, only a 
little too much color, especially in the matter of yellowish-green — a little 
too suggestive of a “ resolute angel that delights in flame.” There was 
a long, vivid description of a journey to Kandy and back — of a reception 
and dinner at Government House, and various other social functions, at 
which the vanity of cliques and the pretensions of little-great ofiicialdom 
and its wives and daughters were noted with an unsparing pen. But there 
were no tender fancies, nor foolish little fondnesses, nor any lingering 
on those feelings that are the food of love. All these Miss Paget, of set 
purpose, denied to herself. Only near the close, as in her previous letter, 
were a few words which might be interpreted as a sign that she was not 


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all the time in brilliant spirits. “ It is all very lively and amusing ; nev- 
ertheless, at times ye rrCennuie horrihlement ; pensez done un pen a moV 

Victor felt, as he had done on receiving Miss Paget’s previous letters, 
that there was something lacking in them. But now he felt strongly 
that there was something lacking in his own heart yet more unmistaka- 
bly. He contrasted the strong emotion with which he anticipated seeing 
Doris from time to time with the feeling that had suddenly surprised 
him on seeing Helen’s letter, and the flimsy disguises with which he had, 
during the last few days, beguiled himself, were torn aside. He lingered 
over his evening meal at the Colmar Arms, though there was little in the 
way of food or company to attract him. Vansittart had, for a day or two 
past, kept entirely to his own room. “ He wasn’t ill, but queer like, and 
didn’t care to eat, or see any one,” the landlady explained. There were 
several strangers at the table, men coming or going to the new diggings. 
Their only talk was of the finds there, or the companies to be started — 
of the diggers and various adventurers, whose numbers were swelling 
daily. Victor listened to them with a dull amazement at the avidity 
with which they harped on these details, long after every fibre of novelty 
had been threshed out of them. His little friend Dick, now happy in a 
toy stem-winder of his own, which Victor had bought for him from a 
travelling jeweller, came and sat by his side, and made conversation to 
the best of his ability. 

It was all very dull, and there was nothing to tempt him to linger as 
he did, except to pass the time till it was half-past eight, when he was 
due at the little school-room of corrugated iron, where he played a solo 
on the violin, and stayed to play a second later on, at Roby Hoskings’s 
pressing entreaty. 

It was close on ten when he got to Stonehouse. The moment he 
opened the door of his room the sweet, penetrating breath of flowers 
saluted him. And lo! there on the toilet-table was a bunch of white 
and Parma violets in a little Sevres bowl. He was still bending over 
them, all the torpor and dulness of the day replaced by an incredible 
thrill of happiness, when there was a tap at the door. It was Shung- 
Loo with a small tray, on which stood a cup of chocolate and some 
biscuits, and an invitation from Mrs. Challoner to breakfast on Sunday 
morning at nine o’clock, which he accepted with thanks. 

“ I could not do anything else,” he reasoned. As if he wished to do 
anything else ! As if he did not lie awake for hours, half intoxicated 
with joy at the prospect of feasting his eyes on a certain face that now 
haunted him day and night with radiant, serious eyes ! As if he did not 
rise with the first sun-rays and wander round the house like an unquiet 
spirit, waiting to catch the first glimpse of Doris ! 

And at last he saw her coming out in a loose white morning robe, her 


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hair in tumbled masses on her shoulders, damp from the shower-bath, as 
if they had caught dew-drops in their folds of tawny amber. She came 
to meet him as he approached her with a luminous sparkle in her face. 

“ You did not come last night, and we wanted so much to thank you,” 
she said ; and with that she gave him her hand. 

And as he held it for a moment in his, timidly touching the firm, 
slender fingers for the first time, it seemed to him as if this quiet Sun- 
day morning, in the heart of the arid Salt-bush country, would henceforth 
become the great date of his life. He could not have told what he said 
in reply, but it was doubtless something appropriate, for Doris went on 
with an enchanting look of gladness that seemed of right to belong to 
her, though it had of late been absent from her face, 

“ Such a great boxful of violets ! You would hardly believe how many 
little dishes we filled with them. And it is late in the season for them. 
We had very few at Ouranie in November. Did you see the little bowl- 
ful we put in your room ? . . . Oh, it is we who have to thank you more 
and more ! I wonder if you know how much I love violets, and white 
ones especially?” 

“ I felt sure you did. Although I could not see any, it seemed as if 
you always had some.” 

The old look of deep, pathetic gravity came back to her eyes. 

“ Ah, that is because at Ouranie we made scent from them. They 
did not last long there, and we gathered them — mother and I — in great 
basinfuls, and got all the scent out of them by an old recipe. Do you 
like it ? There is some on this handkerchief !” 

She held it out to him, and he took the soft, daintily laced bit of 
gossamer in his hand and held it for some time, feeling dreadfully loath 
to give it up. 

“ It is sweeter than the violets themselves,” he averred ; and he turned 
the little handkerchief over with a lingering tenderness. 

Did she guess that he coveted it? It would seem so, for after he 
restored it she went into her room — they were by this time on the 
veranda — and presently came back with a white Indian silk handker- 
chief, embroidered round the edge with those fanciful little Gooloo fig- 
ures in palest dog-rose pink. 

“ I worked them a long time ago, and I have put some of our extract 
of violets on it for you. Will you please keep it, and this little bottle- 
ful ?” 

“I shall keep them as long as I live,” he said, taking these little gifts 
from her with a stormy beating of the heart. 

“ But no ; the handkerchief will wear out in a year or two, and you 
will use the scent in a few months,” she said, looking at him with sur- 
prise at the extravagance of the metaphor he used. 


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187 


any rate, you will allow that I may keep this pretty little cut- 
glass bottle for a long time,” he said, half laughing, ready to treat his 
unguarded speech as a meaningless trope, though he felt in every fibre 
of his being it was but a cold statement of a bare fact. 

Could it ever dawn on her how much they were to him, those simple 
little tokens of good-will ? What would she have thought if she could 
have seen him that evening in his own room, pressing her silk handker- 
chief to his lips over and over again ? As he pictured to himself the 
wondering surprise in her sweet, grave eyes, he colored and smiled, and 
thrust the precious embroidered morsel of silk into an inner breast- 
pocket of his coat. 

Mrs. Challoner’s invitation to breakfast had been warmly extended to 
the rest of the day, and the hours had passed by with something of the 
unreality of a happy dream — with something, too, of that cold awaken- 
ing to the complications of every-day life that too often comes after 
moments of visionary bliss. 

Near sunset they all walked a couple of miles across the western plain. 
Its most marked feature was the track that led through the frayed Salt- 
bush to Broombush Creek — a track now wide and trodden into a well- 
defined road by the ceaseless traffic of the crowds on foot, on horseback, 
and in vehicles, ceaselessly pushing on to seek their fortunes at the new 
diggings, A few stray passengers were in sight, and here and there in 
the distance were to be seen films of smoke floating up from brushwood 
fires, kindled by the travellers to boil their billies of tea. Challoner and 
his wife walked in advance, the three young people a little behind them. 

‘‘ We must drive across to see the diggings,” said Challoner, turning 
round, one day before the rush is over. It will be something for you 
to remember, Miss Doris, when you get to the Old World.” 

It was then, from some further talk that passed, Victor learned for 
the first time how near this departure was. Directly after Christmas ! 
Something seemed to obscure his sight for an instant. It seemed as 
though the vast, melancholy plain, that made an interminable landscape 
wherever one looked, had suddenly engulfed his joy, his dawning expec- 
tations, his vague hopes. All his life he would recall with strange vivid- 
ness the sensation that overcame him that moment, as if the vital forces 
of being were suddenly lowered, and the world had resolved itself into 
an illimitable, ash-colored wilderness, over which human lives passed like 
flying shadows, like the phantoms of a dream lost in infinite abysses of 
unremembering sleep. For a brief space an inexplicable melancholy fast- 
ened itself on him with a virulence which had hitherto been totally un- 
known to him. It was as if for one implacable moment he saw, as in a 
vision, the struggling, restless, tragic futility of human hopes, begotten 
in ignorance, snatched away in a passion of anguish, eternally lost in a 


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little mound of dust. But such sombre reflections were foreign to his 
temperament, and the next moment he was almost ready to smile at 
them. 

‘‘You ara going to relations, I suppose?” he said, after a little. 

“Yes; distant relations on my father^s side. But besides the rela- 
tionship, Mme. de Serziac was my mother’s dearest friend. Her chil- 
dren are my cousins.” 

After they returned to the house she showed him their photographs — 
the mother, the two daughters, and the son, taken at various ages. The 
last one of the latter represented a young man with a pointed moustache 
and the immaculately fitting uniform of a sous-lieutenant in the French 
Guards. It was on this photograph that Victor looked the longest. 

“ He looks very different there, doesn’t he ?” said Doris reflectively, 
turning to this photo from the previous one, in which he had been 
taken with his sisters, looking rather an awkward youth with over-long 
limbs. 

“ Yes ; you see, he is quite grown-up here, and a soldier. Of course 
you like the soldier one best?” replied Victor, looking at the young 
officer with a sombre brow. He hated himself for making the sugges- 
tion as soon as he had spoken the words. But Doris answered without 
the slightest hesitation. 

“ No, I don’t think I do ; for, you see, he seems more like a stranger, 
and I don’t like to write to him as I used to do.” 

“Oh, do you, then, correspond with each other?” 

“You see, it was like this,” answered Doris, leaning her cheek on one 
hand and looking up at him. “ We always wrote to each other, two or 
three times a year when we were children — on birthdays and at Easter 
and Christmas time — sending cards and little gifts. Then for four or 
five years Raoul did hot write at all. I suppose he was too busy, for he 
left St. Cyr and went into the army when he was only eighteen, and 
only sent messages and birthday remembrances in his sisters’ letters 
when he was at home. But after we sent them our photographs — 
these,” turning the leaves of the album to the picture in which she was 
taken with her mother on her sixteenth birthday, “Raoul wrote a 
nice, long letter to me, asking for a picture for himself, and begging that 
I would write just as I used to long ago. But I think it would be silly 
to write like that now.” 

“Yes, and Doris said the other day she would ask you about it, Mr. 
Fitz-Gibbon,” said Euphemia, who was sitting near Doris with her 
accustomed gift of silence, but listening to all that passed with deep 
interest. 

“Ask me?” repeated Victor. The gloom that had gathered on his 
face sensibly lightened. 


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189 


“ Yes ; I thought you would know what sort of letter a boy quite 
grown-up would really like to get,” answered Doris, a little shyly. 

“Oh, as for me, I should like to get any sort of letter that you 
wrote.” 

But this assurance, though spoken with that perfect veracity which 
seldom animates human intercourse, did not seem quite to satisfy Doris. 

“Isn’t that the sort of thing one says for the sake of politeness?” 
she said hesitatingly ; and then, after a little pause, as if to soften the 
inquiry, “Of course you cannot tell how very stupid I am at writing 
letters. You see I know, because my cousins write such very clever 
letters — quite different from mine.” 

“ I have been wondering what sort of letters you used to write,” said 
Victor slowly, having with difficulty resisted the temptation of making 
various assertions during the pause that ensued. 

“ Well, mostly about the ffowers — there were always flowers at Ou- 
ranie ; and the birds, and the look of the sky — ” 

“ If you were writing to-night, what would you say about it ?” 

“ About the sky, do you mean ?” 

“Yes.” 

She looked out through the open window and into the tranquil heavens, 
where the moon, almost at the full, was slowly mounting into sight. Her 
eyes grew large and humid as she slowly replied, 

“ I would say that the dark half of the moon was over, and that it 
was like a great silver basin heaped up with soft white lilies. And all 
the time, you see,” she said, turning round and looking at him earnestly 
with her great, candid eyes, “ the moon is like a cinder, as dry as ashes, 
full of dreadful scars and extinct volcanoes. I was so disappointed when 
mother told me about it when I learned a little about astronomy.” 

Victor looked into the pure, sweet face upturned to his with a growing 
thrill of emotion. It was with difficulty he averted his eyes, and said 
with an affectation of carelessness, 

“ Well, if a good fairy came to me and gave me my choice of gifts, I 
know what I should choose.” 

“ I should like to know.” 

“ Letters like those you wrote from Ouranie.” 

“ Really, do you mean ?” 

“ Really and truly.” 

“ I wonder at that very much.” 

“Why do you?” 

“ Because there are so many things more important than getting any 
letters. If you had your choice, would you not sooner be back with 
your mother?” 

Victor turned quickly, and looked out at the window. He was forced 


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to smile, and he feared that if Doris saw him, his levity would seem as 
strange to her as his choice of fortune. 

‘‘ Well, there isn’t much chance of fairies giving us the embarrassment 
of choosing,” he said, evading a direct answer. ‘‘But some kinds of 
letters 'would rank very high with me. ... I suppose you like getting 
your cousins’ ?” 

“ Oh, yes, especially Eugenie’s. Sh6 is just a few months older than I 
am, and she is going into society this season. There has been so much 
for her to tell about, and she makes you feel as if you knew the people.” 

“Like that letter in which she told you about the duchess, Doris,” 
remarked Euphemia. 

“ For my part, I would much sooner hear about the silver basin heaped 
up with soft white lilies,” said Victor. 

“Then do you think I might write to Raoul as I used to?” asked 
Doris, a little anxiously. 

Victor knitted his brows, and stroked his moustache with slow 
thoughtfulness. 

“ It is diflScult to advise about another person, especially one you know 
nothing about. Of course I can answer for myself. I’ll tell you what 
I think we might do — that is, to make my opinion of any value — ” 

The young Machiavelli paused and looked as grave and reflective as if 
he were trying to decide a knotty question of statecraft. 

“ Yes, tell me,” urged Doris with interest. 

“ You might fancy I was a long way off, and that you wanted to write 
to me and let me know what this place was like, and so on, like an 
exercise, you know, and then I might help you — ” 

“ Oh, yes, that would be nice ; but what a shame to practise on you ! 
Don’t you mind ?” 

“ Not in the least. I was going to say that I could help you to make 
it into an ordinary letter, like the prosy, sensible things people generally 
write, and then you could send it to your cousin.” 

“ It is no use, I must write and tell the whole truth to Helen,” Victor 
was saying to himself half an hour later in his own room. “ It will be 
horrid, I know. . . . What in the name of heaven made me fancy I was 
in love ! . . . Oh, what a beautiful darling she is ! . . . And going away 
in six or seven weeks. ... I shall take my passage by the same ship. 
I shall find it necessary. Will she ever care for me a little ? But what 
a fearful donkey I was! . . . Fortunately, Helen does not love me. . . . 
I am quite sure of that nowP 


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191 


CHAPTER XXV. 

Some days later Victor received two letters that served to tranquillize 
the contending emotions and purposes that so often assailed him during 
the interval. The 'first was one from Miss Paget, telling him that her 
father had persuaded Professor Codrington to accompany him back to 
Adelaide on a long visit, that they might probably be leaving in less 
than a month from the date of writing, so that any future letters of his 
to Colombo would be peradventure ones. If the professor received 
certain tidings from England when they were due, they might be leaving 
a little earlier than four weeks. They were, perhaps, going to get out at 
Albany and take the train across to Perth for a short visit. There were 
friends of the professor’s there, and he had little difficulty in persuading 
her father to break the journey back. As for herself, she was at present 
a sort of classic chorus, whose remarks might be from time to time 
audible regarding events without in the least affecting their course. Per- 
sonally, she would much sooner have stayed longer at Colombo, with its 
Bengalis, Moslems, Punjabis, Ghoorkas, etc., hustling each other in the 
streets ; its swarms of bronze children in dingy sarees, of women clothed 
in slim cotton robes and a baby on the hip, to say nothing of the funny 
little boards of smeared sweetmeats under coarse mats, supported on four 
slender bamboo canes. . . . The bride, too, was far from having exhausted 
the resources of her trousseau. Only the other day the barometer fell a 
little, and she instantly went into feathers — plumes on her jacket and 
skirt, plumes on her head, and a long, white feather boa. It was just as 
if an enchanter had been turning her into a bird, and the process was 
arrested half-way. She was full of those /0Z5 enfantillages some brides 
were fond of indulging in. . . . Well, if no more letters reached her from 
Victor in Colombo, she would at least expect a few lines at Perth or 
Albany, addressed care of the P. and O. agent. 

The other letter was from his mother, written after she had got his, 
telling of the attachment between himself and Helen, and the engage- 
ment imminent after the period of probation. Mrs. Fitz-Gibbon wrote 
with some emotion. She entirely refused to look on this affair in a seri- 
ous light. 

Dear boy,” she wrote, what put it into your head that you were in 
love with a lady almost old enough to be your mother, and to propose 


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before you attained your majority ? When I read the cool, matter-of- 
fact announcement, and then thought of the lava-torrent of eloquence 
into which you would have plunged as to the eyes, lips, etc., of the 
adored one, if your heart had been really touched — pardon me, dear, if I 
tell you that I could not help laughing. You rash, impulsive boy 1 Not 
that, perhaps, it is surprising you should have mutually whiled away 
some of the tedious days by a little love-making. . . . Apart from the 
question of age. Miss Paget has many attractions. She is intelligent 
and very nice-looking. But the discrepancy is too preposterous, and 
my own belief is that it was only to let you down gently that she sug- 
gested the compromise. She has too biting a sense of humor not to 
appreciate the ludicrousness of the matter; for you are not only very 
young in years, but young for your age, as your father was before 
you. Please allow a little to my knowledge of two generations of Fitz- 
Gibbons.” 

It may be doubted whether this was altogether a judicious letter, or 
would have gone far to effect the object of the writer, had not a more 
potent cause been at work. Even though Victor would now be glad to 
believe that Miss Paget had not seriously looked forward to their en- 
gagement, his mother’s letter vexed and irritated him — till he came to 
the last page. 

But at any rate, my dear boy, you will come to bring me home, be- 
fore you take any further steps in the matter. Now that we have not 
to study economy so painfully, there is no reason why we should not 
have our long-projected little tours together. I shall meet you on the 
Continent according to the line you prefer to come by.” 

When his office-work was over that day, Victor saddled his horse and 
rode out towards Broombush Creek. As he galloped across the plain, his 
hopes became boundless as the high, wide horizon round him. He would 
write a short letter to Helen at Colombo, and then a note to Perth, tell- 
ing her he would meet her as soon as she landed. He would run down 
to town for the purpose. . . . After all, she had been wise enough to 
see from the first that there was an impossible element in his wooing. 
He went further, and began to feel sure that his mother’s view of Miss 
Paget’s action was the true one. . . . Well, she would always be his 
friend — she had often said so — irrespective of any closer bond ; and she 
would love Doris. Who would not that once saw her ? 

Then, in fear and trembling, he suddenly asked himself whether it 
were possible that he could ever win so dazzling, so overwhelming a gift 
as Doris’s love. But as he recalled her growing gayety and confiding air, 
the sweet little smile with which she now gave him her hand on meeting 
and parting, his hopes rose high. He was near her ; he would see her 
day by day ; he would go by the same ship that the Challoners chose 


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193 


for their voyage after Christmas. Yes, he was sure now all would be 
well. A great, unreasoning wave of joy swept over him as he rode on, 
and he gave vent to his feelings by singing at the pitch of his voice, 

“ Hurrah, hurrah, let’s sound the jubilee ! 

Hurrah, hurrah, the flag that sets us free ! 

Hurrah, hurrah — ” 

He was arrested by the sound of a clear, mocking echo, as distinct as 
his own voice. It was from the low rock near the broken-down whim, 
to which he was quite close, though he had not noticed it, in his joy- 
ous self-absorption. Two men were half reclining on their swags at 
the foot of this rock, resting while they boiled a billy of water for tea. 
Victor slackened his pace. As he approached them, a dog rose up and 
began to bark joyously, struggling to get away; but one of the men held 
him back by a stout cord. It was Doris’s Spot — the friendly young collie 
who accepted every one as a possible friend. The tramp made a feeble 
statement about being followed by the dog from somewhere near the 
Colmar, and refusing to turn back. 

“That’s a way dogs have when held by a ship’s hawser,” said Victor, 
laughing. 

He went no farther, but rode back at once, with Spot running ahead. 
When they came in sight of Stonehouse, he bombarded the place with 
his short, excited barks. Before Victor reached the front avenue there 
was Doris rejoicing over her vagrant, with Rex looking on, saying as elo- 
quently as eyes and a tail can speak, “I told him he would get into a 
mess, going to speak to strange swagmen.” 

As Victor anticipated, Doris had been in great trouble at Spot’s dis- 
appearance. They missed him shortly after mid-day, and waited for his 
return in vain. Then Doris and Euphemia had gone across to the mine 
to see if he had followed Mr. Fitz-Gibbon ; but no trace of him was to be 
seen. 

“ Now here he is, all safe and sound, the naughty old darling !” and 
both girls embraced him and patted him, a proceeding which Spot en- 
joyed immensely. 

“ Do you know, after all, there is something of the good fairy about 
you,” said Doris. “You get boxes of flowers for us, as if by making a 
sign over the Salt-bush, and now you rescued Spot when he was being 
stolen.” 

“ Well, and do you know what this good fairy advises, so as to make 
Mr. Spot give up following chance swagmen ?” said Victor. “ Tie him 
up for a whole day, and give him a beating.” 

The bare suggestion won more caresses for Spot. Then Doris told 
Victor how, during their search, they had seen a dog that in the distance 
13 


194 


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looked like hers disappearing into a tent. They went to the door to 
inquire. 

“ Only there was no real door,” she said, “ but just a sack hanging in 
the opening ; and inside there was a poor woman looking dreadfully ill, 
with two children in bed, sick of a fever. Oh, such a miserable place ! 
— the floor, bare earth, dirty and uneven — no chairs — not even a table ; 
and the woman thinks it is the water out of the tank that makes them 
ill.” 

“ Yes, I know they are rather bad, the sort of places some of the min- 
ers live in,” assented Victor, but without much interest. 

Doris, however, was not content with being merely sorry. She wanted 
to have something done. Hesitating a little, and looking down, while a 
deeper tinge of color stole into her cheeks, she said she had some money 
to spend as she liked, and she wanted to do something for this family. 
Could Victor suggest some way of getting them a better place to live in ? 
At Ouranie they had got a little wooden house from town, all ready to 
be put up at Peppermint Kanges for a school. 

“Couldn’t we do something like that for the Connels?” asked Doris, 
looking at the mine-purser with her direct, serious gaze. 

But was this a matter to be decided in half a minute of time, while one 
is holding one’s horse by the bridle ? No ; it was a question to be talked 
over for an hour and a half, by the light of many Qandles, softened by 
pink shades, with an elderly couple playing their habitual elderly games 
of chess, with the breath of late violets and sheaves of white lilac per- 
vading the room, and the cool evening wind stealing in through the open 
windows. 

Victor found the advertisement of a firm of builders, in one of the 
weekly newspapers, illustrated by a seductive wood-cut of a little three- 
roomed wooden building, with doors and windows all complete. Doris 
and Euphemia looked at this picture with rapt enthusiasm. 

“ I think it is better for the price than the building we got for the 
school-room,” said Doris, with quite a business-like air. Then she took 
up a pencil and wrote some figures on a piece of paper. “ I think I 
should like to order three of these houses. There are some others with 
children who are ill,” she added, after a pause. 

“ But you mustn’t begin to present people with houses as if they were 
Christmas cards,” said Victor, smiling. 

Euphemia was summoned into the kitchen in consultation over a cake 
that was being made. When she was gone, Doris, in reply to Victor’s 
remonstrance, said very gravely, 

“ But I know mother would like me to help these poor people. I like 
to do things that seem to bring us nearer.” 

Victor felt something like a pang of jealousy at the thought that 


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195 


Doris’s love for her mother was so deep that it might exclude the growth 
of a new affection. This was succeeded by the reflection that he might 
help his own cause with her by co-operation in this matter. ’Zilla had 
a few days ago returned part of the loan he had made to him, at the 
same time expressing a wish that there were some place to which he 
could bring his wife at the mine. She was too delicate to live in a tent. 

‘‘You have put a plan in my mind,” he said; “that is, if you order 
one of these wooden places. I’ll order another for ’Zilla Jenkins. But, 
you know, I think we ought to charge a little rent. The miners here 
get good wages, and can afford to pay a little for a place to live in.” 

“ But not when the children are ill,” objected Doris. 

The next day she went further, and told Victor the people who were 
getting money out of the mine ought to provide houses for the miners. 
Altogether, he found this business of ordering two prosaic little wooden 
buildings a wonderfully enchanting affair. Indeed, at this period he 
lived in a world of enchantment. There was a light in his eyes and a 
glow on his face oftentimes that might draw the eyes of the least-inter- 
ested observer. 

“ Smiling at angels again, Fitz-Gibbon ?” said Vansittart, a few even- 
ings after the weather-board cottages had been ordered. It was the fifth 
day after Trevaskis’s return from town, and the three were sitting at tea 
in the dining-room of the Colmar Arms, when Vansittart abruptly broke 
the silence with this inquiry. 

“ What do you mean ?” said Victor, turning to him, his unconscious 
look of beatitude replaced by one of wonder. 

“ Ten minutes ago I was talking to you most profoundly about the 
destinies of the human race. I said they were unable to achieve any 
real lasting good, and that the divinities who tried to help them had all 
ended with failure. There was the Indian god who tried to carry the 
world to salvation, and lost his hands and arms; another who developed 
a liver with a fowl snapping it out of him through ages ; another who 
was put to death on a cross. ‘ Yes,’ said you softly, staring into your 
teacup with a little smile. After that your mine-manager spoke of the 
great dray-loads of machinery that are on the way from Nilpeena to 
Broombush Creek. On that, you looked out through the window, again 
smiling ineffably. x\re you in love ?” 

Much, no doubt, may be forgiven to a very young man who is for the 
first time passionately in love ; but when his state of exalted preoccupa- 
tion was so crudely brought home to him, Victor felt that his behavior 
had been very boyish and undignified, and in momentary confusion he 
seized the first explanation that offered itself to him. 

“ Don’t you know,” he said, “ that when people smile into their tea- 
cups and at windows, it is money they are thinking about — gold heaped 


196 


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up in an old cave room ? By the way, captain, I suppose I can go on 
now with that search ?” 

Trevaskis shot a quick look at Vansittart, and then at Victor, the 
blood surging violently into his face. He had been several hours for four 
nights running at work in the cave room, retorting and smelting the 
amalgam, and his first thought, when thus addressed, was that he had 
somehow been spied upon. 

“ It’s better to settle mine - matters at the mine,” he answered 
brusquely. 

“ Don’t mind my presence in this matter, sir,” said Vansittart, with 
icy politeness. “You see,” he went on, fixing his eyes steadily on the 
manager’s face, “ it was I who first told Mr. Fitz-Gibbon that the cave 
room was well worth looking into. I wonder he has taken so long about 
the matter. For a young man who is so much wrapped up in money, 
he is singularly dilatory.” 

Trevaskis emitted an ejaculation that was between a snort and a grunt 
— one of those sounds of defiant indignation which have perhaps de- 
scended to us from the days preceding the evolution of speech, still re- 
taining a primitive eloquence that defies translation into language. 

He felt certain for one brief moment that all was known, that these 
speeches were prearranged, and the prelude to openly denouncing him 
as a thief. But he recalled his terror on that first night, when he made 
sure that he was uncovering a mutilated corpse. “ It may be another 
dead rat, after all,” he said to himself. He drained a cup of tea, and 
then went to the sideboard to pour himself out another. His hand 
shook like a leaf, but with a strong effort of will he controlled himself. 

“Did I tell you that Dr. Magann is coming to settle at the mine?” 
he said to Victor, resuming his place at the table. . . . “ Oh, yes — next 
week. There’s not a soul left at The Ridges and Hooper’s Luck, except 
a few women and children and an old man or two. The rush to Broom- 
bush has thinned a lot of the townships between this and Adelaide ; but 
as for The Ridges, it’s simply cleaned out. It’s lucky the old doctor is 
coming here ; there’s illness in three or four of the tents and huts.” 

In his determination to ignore the terror that had for a moment over- 
taken him, he talked more than was his wont. He even retailed some 
old mining stories, over which he and Victor laughed heartily. Alto- 
gether he was a much more genial being through the rest of the meal 
than he had ever been at that table before. 

Vansittart sat listening and looking on in gloomy silence. A curious 
change had come over him since his illness. That pervasive ecstasy of 
the nerves, evoked by what he called his Australian “ keef,” had en- 
tirely forsaken him. It had no longer power to charm him into pleas- 
ing visions or complacent monologues, alternated with drowsy, voluptu- 


The silent sea 


i9? 

ous reveries. When he spoke, it was in bitter discontent with the world 
and all that it contained. But for the most part he sat silent, with an 
expression of unmoved sombreness on his face. He fixed his attention 
on Trevaskis from the iBoment that the cave room was mentioned till he 
left the dining-room. Then, turning to Victor, who was lighting a cig- 
arette preparatory to leaving, he said, 

“ What is that man up to ? You noticed nothing unusual in his man- 
ner? Why, the moment you mentioned gold, the blood rushed to his 
face in a torrent. His eyes, too, are much worse again, and when he 
lifted his teacup his hand trembled as if he were in a fit of D. T. . . . 
Hasn’t he made some excuse so as to prevent your going into the cave 
room ?” 

It has not yet been convenient. I haven’t been thinking much about 
it, to tell the truth.” 

“ Well, I tell you he is up to his eyes thieving in that place.” 

It always gave Victor an uncomfortable feeling to hear a man impute 
a baseness to another. Perhaps he was as much in danger of being mis- 
led by his belief in people generally till they proved themselves unwor- 
thy of confidence, as Trevaskis was by his unfailing suspicions of all with 
whom he came in contact. This trait of his character had from the first 
forced itself on Victor, and he thought he now recognized the same ten- 
dency in Vansittart. It was this that induced him to reply, 

“ I have often heard of the melancholy of the Bush, and do you know, 
Vansittart, I begin to think that it makes people take rather gloomy 
views of human nature.” 

“ Yes, because you have plenty of time for reflection and concentrated 
observation — that is, if you have come to years of discretion. As for you, 
young man, if I am not mistaken, you live and move in an artificial para- 
dise just at present. You have inhaled more keef than I have swallowed 
in all my life. Take care that your heaven does not come down with a 
run, like a broken drop-scene.” 

He stared hard into the bright, handsome young face opposite to him. 
Its indomitable gladness seemed to wound him almost like an insult. 

“ Well, as long as you suspect me only of being happy — ” 

“ Yes ; but don’t forget that happiness in a world like this is the last 
refuge of an idiot !” said Vansittart savagely. 

On this Victor laughed outright, and rose to go. But something in 
the sombre eyes, the forlorn, stooping attitude, the uncared-for, lonely 
look of the man, suddenly touched him. 

“ I say, old man, I don’t believe it’s a good thing for you to be stay- 
ing on here with nothing to do. Wouldn’t you find it more amusing to 
wait for your friend in town?” he said, putting his hand on Vansittart’s 
shoulder as he spoke. 


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‘‘It wouldn’t make any real difference to me,” answered Vansittart, 
after a little pause. . . . “ I came across an old black fellow dying from a 
wound and from thirst once in the Bush. ‘ Wirin-ap yarnt-il, wirin-ap 
yarnt-il !’ he kept on saying a score of times to ^e minute, which means, 
‘ I am sick from a spear-wound.’ That’s about the size of it with me. 
My life has been a claim that didn’t pan out well. I’m better waiting 
here than in town.” 

“ Poor old chap ! I wonder what came over him ?” thought Victor, as 
he walked across to his office. “ I might have offered to play a game or 
two of euchre with him. . . . But, then, there is this letter about the 
weather-board cottages which I want Doris to see.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

Trevaskis, though outwardly calm, was in a state of indescribable 
excitement as he walked across from the Colmar Arms ^o the mine. 
His throat felt parched ; his pulses seemed to be thundering in his ears. 
So it was Vansittart who had first told Fitz-Gibbon about the probable 
treasure that was secreted at the mine. Vansittart had been for some 
months acting as purser while the amalgam was being stolen. Now he 
was staying on at the Colmar Arms, on the pretext of waiting for an old 
mate, who was coming down from the Far North. Was this a plant? 
Had he any certain knowledge? Was he, perhaps with Fitz-Gibbon’s 
aid, gathering up evidence that would be incontestable ? Would the two, 
with the assistance of a policeman summoned from town, one day break 
open the iron wall that secured the entrance to the cave room ? 

But when his fears had reached this climax, Trevaskis reflected that 
even in such an extremity it would be impossible to convict him of actual 
guilt. No search — no discovery that might possibly be made — could 
connect him with stealing the amalgam. It was characteristic of the 
dogged tenacity with which he kept to a purpose once formed, that even 
the gold which he had retorted and smelted during the past four nights, 
he had secreted underground, though he had been much tempted to put 
the bars in the strong safe that stood in his office. 

But he had already taken action towards securing a place to which he 
would convey the treasure. The day before this he had ridden out tow- 
ards Broombush Creek. In a secluded spot at some distance from it he 
had pegged out a prospector’s quartz claim, and sent in an application to 
the government. As soon as this was granted he intended to set a man 
working there, providing him with a small hut to live in. 


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199 


These would be the preliminary steps. Afterwards, when his three 
hundredweight of gold was ready for the market, he would take it all 
away and elaborate his plans. He would buy up the disused machinery 
at the Colmar Mine, and in common sacks, among old tools, he would take 
away this fortune without a breath of suspicion — if only this double-faced 
young Irishman and this crazy opium-eater did not make mischief. Christ- 
mas was not now far off, and at that date Fitz-Gibbon would be leaving. 

“If I can only tide that time over somehow or another!” he said, 
clenching his right hand rigidly. 

So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he was close to his office- 
door before he saw that some one stood there awaiting him — a powerful- 
looking, thick-set man, half a head shorter than Trevaskis. 

“ Be that ’e. Bill ?” said the man, holding out his hand. 

“ Why, Dan, where did you spring from ? I am so very glad to see 
you — very glad indeed 1” said Trevaskis heartily, as they shook hands. 

Perhaps he felt there was call for this assurance, for it was his brother, 
older than he was by five years, but still a working miner, as he had been 
in early youth. It was now some years since they last met. On that 
occasion Dan had come one evening unexpectedly to his brother’s house ; 
he happened to be entertaining a number of guests at dinner. He would 
not ask Dan in among them, and he could not send him to the kitchen. 
He tried to compromise the matter by pressing a ten-pound note into his 
hand, and asking him to call on the morrow. But Dan had thrust the 
bank-note back with some violence. 

“ Studdy there. Bill, studdy 1 I come to see ’e, not for money. I 
can’t clunk that, man,” he said, and then hurried away. 

“ Come in, Dan, come in,” said Trevaskis, unlocking his door. “ I 
expect you’ve come a good distance, and want something to eat,” he 
added, as he lit the lamp. 

“No, I’ve had tay wi’ my old mate, ’Zilla Jenkins. I met ’im close 
by as I got off Circus Bill’s trap. I coom from Broombush Creek.” 

“ Circus Bill’s trap ” was a passenger coach, which had within the last 
week begun to run daily between Broombush Creek and Nilpeena, 

It turned out that Dan had been at the diggings, not on his own ac- 
count, but summoned there by a brother-in-law, who had been among 
the first in the rush to Broombush Creek. 

“ ’E had pretty good luck, but ’e was took bad, and ’e sent for me. 
’E seemed to know from th’ first as ’e wouldn’t git over it, and ’e just 
wanted to give me safe what ’e ’ad got. Poor old chap I he died yisti- 
day a’ four o’ the marning. I feel quite whizzy like. They’ll die there 
like flies before long ; such a shaape ’ole I never seed. I wouldn’t sta}^ 
there for no money. ’E give me this, poor fellow 1 ’twas ’ard to die for 
the sake o’ getting ’t for another man.” 


200 


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Dan produced a soiled cotton handkerchief with a round lump knot- 
ted in the middle. It was a number of small nuggets of gold, about 
twenty ounces in all, 

I reckon ’tis about fifty pun worth o’ gold ?” he said interrogatively. 
There was a good deal of quartz mixed with it. 

“ ril give you seventy pounds for them, Dan,” said Trevaskis, turning 
the nuggets over. 

All the sombreness had left his face. There was a ring of gladness in 
his voice, and a light in his eyes. Here was the one man in all the world 
who could best help him to carry out his plans. He wondered now he 
had not thought of Dan before. He was a man who would be bound 
to him by the strongest ties — one of a faithful, trusting nature — who, 
if the facts of the case must eventually be revealed to him, would not be 
greatly shocked or surprised. But only under urgent necessity would 
he make a confidant even of Dan. He would at first tell him as much 
or as little as the emergency called for. These thoughts passed with 
lightning rapidity through Trevaskis’s mind. 

“ Seventy pun. Bill ! Why, you’re making me a present o’ some o’ 
that, sure ’nough,” said Dan, smiling. 

“ Oh, I’m going into the gold-buying trade before long,” answered 
Trevaskis. . . . “ Now, isn’t it a funny thing when you come to think 
of it ?” he went on reflectively, “ Here have I been for the last week 
thinking every day of writing to you, not only to answer the letter I 
got when I was coming here, but because I wanted to make you a cer- 
tain offer.” 

‘‘ What sort o’ hoffer. Bill ?” 

I am going to take up a prospector’s claim a few miles away from 
Broombush diggings, and I want you to take charge of it at, say, six 
pounds a week.” 

“ That’s a handsome wage, Bill ! Then you make sure there’s gold 
there ?” 

“ I know it,” said Trevaskis ; and then he went on to explain that, in 
some way which he could not then divulge, he had found out that a 
quantity of gold had been hidden in that locality years before ; that the 
two men who were chiefly concerned in it were dead, and that no one 
else had now a better right to it than he had himself. “ In fact,” he said, 
lowering his voice, it’s for the sake of that I’m staying on here, I 
don’t want to throw up my billet till I can make a proper search, and to 
make a proper search a man must fossick about, perhaps for months. 
You’ve turned up just in the nick of time. I’ll provide you a comforta- 
ble crib to live in, and a horse and some sort of machine. There’s a lot 
of old, second-hand tools here that I can buy cheap from the company.” 

Trevaskis, in his excitement, walked up and down the room, hardly 


THE SILENT SEA 


201 


glviDg his brother time to put in a word. The longer he thought over 
the plan of having Dan at the claim, the more certain he felt of ultimate 
success. Dan had never risen a step above the class he was born in ; but 
he was a safe man and a true, noted from childhood for being well able 
to keep his own counsel under all circumstances. He had, it was true, a 
weakness for drink; well, that would be no detriment in this case, at 
certain times. 

But what tools should we want. Bill, if it’s only just to fossick round ? 
A biddix or two for diggin’, and a buss and a crock for cookin’, as poor 
father used to say, is all a miner wants.” 

“My dear man, we don’t want to advertise to all the world and his 
wife what our schemes are. The plan will be for you to begin working 
at the rock, as if we were going in for crushing and all the rest of it. 
When all is done, Dan, I’ll give you a couple of hundred pounds over 
and above your wages.” 

“ Well, Bill, you’re no bufflehead at making money, and I’m no snail- 
dew at work, and I’m sure it ’ull be all’ays fair sailin’ ’twixt thee and I ; 
we’ll chait neer another nor each other, but it fills me o’ wonder you 
should make so cocksure o’ finding the gold. Now, in a body o’ troode, 
thee mayst take the word o’ a man that ’nil lie like old Nick hissel’ on 
gold.” 

“ I know that, Dan, I know that,” answered Trevaskis, laughing. 
“ But you may be pretty sure I’m not going to engage and send you to 
my claim on a fool’s errand. Now we’ll drink success to our venture.” 

He produced a bottle of brandy, tumblers, and a jug of water. 

“ Softly, softly. Bill ! Yes, if you have a few biskies, I don’t mind 
if I taste one or two,” said Dan. Then they clinked their glasses to 
drink success to the gold-searching. As they were in the act of doing 
this, a loud, hard, single knock was heard at the window. Trevaskis 
instantly went out, but there was no one in sight. 

“ I heard no footsteps, did you, Dan ?” 

“No, not a sound, but that one hard knock. ... I don’t like it. 
Bill.” 

“ Oh, nonsense, man ! it was a dumbledory with wings — one of those 
creatures that come out on warm nights — ” 

“ ’Twas a tremenjous row for a hinsek to make. Bill,” said the elder 
brother incredulously. 

“ But, then, a man couldn’t get out of sight for three minutes, at the 
very least, Dan. You see, there’s the rest of the oflSces in a row to the 
south, and the galvanized iron passage that reaches to an old sort of 
underground place on the north side. You haven’t got the old Cornish 
superstitions in you still, have you ?” 

Trevaskis laughed and drained his glass. Dan also drained his, but 


202 


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he did not laugh. He did not like a loud, solitary knock, with no one 
visible w^hen it was answered. How often had it been proved to be a 
sign, that of those who heard it one would be beyond the reach of all 
sounds of earth before a year had run ! Trevaskis guessed the thoughts 
that darkened Dan’s brow, and, lighting a candle, he went out and 
searched about round the window. Presently he came in with a great 
winged beetle, dead, on the palm of his hand. 

“There, Dan, there’s your prophet — dashed himself dead with one 
blow, trying to get in to the light. Help yourself to another nip. This 
is proper old Martell. None of your fiery new rubbish !” 

They spent the next hour in arranging the details of Dan’s search at 
the claim. He was to work alone, but would ride across every second 
evening or so. All would be ready for him by the time he came back. 
He had to return to Bendigo to let his cottage, perhaps sell it, and set 
his little affairs in order. But he would be back in nine or ten days at 
the longest, including half a day’s stay at Mount Lofty to see his son 
Dick, the bank clerk. 

“ That’s one thing I’m all’ays thankful to you for. Bill — gettin’ that 
boy a dacent, easy berth,” said Dan ; “ for he’s took arter his poor, dead 
mother, not fit for a full shift o’ hard work. He’s growed fust-rate, 
though, hoyer by a head nor me.” 

Trevaskis knew that this youtli was the pride of his father’s heart, and 
he let him talk on, throwing in a eulogistic phrase now and then, while 
his thoughts were busy elsewhere. At ten o’clock he made a bed for 
Dan in the office on the sofa, which could be broadened at will for that 
purpose. 

“ I’ll clear out the next room to this for you, Dan, and you can take 
a bed here when you come over from the claim,” he said, as he bade 
Dan good-night. “It will be a fine thing for us both, for we’ve seen 
too little of each other all these years, and yet I’ll be bound we’d do as 
much for one another as most brothers.” 

Trevaskis seldom spoke with much effusion, but when he did he usu- 
ally had an object to gain. At present this consisted, in the first 
instance, in inspiring his brother with complete confidence in his good- 
will. 

At dawn the next morning Circus Bill made a very early start to Nil- 
peena, so as to return on the same day to Broombush Creek. The brothers 
parted on the heartiest terms. On that day, and during the greater part 
of the succeeding week, Trevaskis arranged to have his dinner at the 
Colmar Arms alone, by going there an hour later than the usual time. 
His breakfast and evening meal he managed to get in his owm rooms, 
by having a spirit-lamp to boil water for tea, and getting the baker to 
leave a pound of butter and a loaf of bread now and then. He was. 


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203 


when hard at work, a spare eater, and had hitherto rarely passed the 
bounds of temperance in drinking*. But now, with the constant strain 
of working half the night, and often sleeping badly the other half, he 
got into the way of depending more and more on stimulant, to meet the 
heavy demands he made upon his endurance. During these days he 
kept out of Victor’s way as much as possible. He expected him daily 
to renew his proposition about the search, and the only plan which he 
could at present devise was simply to decline doing anything in the 
matter till the brother of the late manager came to take delivery of his 
effects. It was a pitifully lame excuse — he knew that — one which would 
give color to the strongest suspicions as to his motives ; but every day’s 
delay was worth hundreds of pounds to him. Night by night, as he 
retorted and smelted the gold, and added to his heap of shining bars, 
he became more indifferent to the thought of mere suspicion — to any- 
thing short of losing the fortune that each night brought more and more 
surely within his grasp. 

Apart from this robbery, he was most devoted to the interests of the 
Colmar Mine, seeing to all the details of the work above and below 
ground with a feverish restlessness that knew no pause. Then, about 
nine in the evening, he would go down to the cave room, put five hun- 
dred ounces of amalgam in the retort, plaster its top edge with carefully 
wrought clay, before putting on the lid, which he made air-tight by 
driving in the holding-down wedges. Then he kindled the fire in the 
furnace, slowly bringing it up to red heat. At eleven o’clock he would 
go to see the night-shift go below, scrutinizing each of the men with an 
eagle eye. If one of them showed the least symptom of intoxication 
he instantly ordered him away. One of the shift-bosses would some- 
times intercede for an old or tried miner. 

No, I won’t have it — I won’t have it ! There’s been too much of 
that sort of thing at this mine,” Trevaskis would say in iron tones. 
‘‘Rock-drills are destroyed and slovenly work is done, if the men are 
not perfectly sober. I’m here to protect the company and the share- 
holders, not to coddle drunken rascals.” 

Then he would return to his gold. About midnight, when the retorting 
was completed, he turned out the spongy cake of gold, broke it up with 
a hammer and chisel into small lumps, placed them in a crucible with the 
necessary fluxes, and put the crucible in the assay furnace, which he had 
ready heated with gartshore coke, out of the bags he had found near 
the furnaces. The smelting took from fifteen to twenty minutes. Then 
he poured the molten gold into a long, narrow iron mould, and, when 
solid, turned it out into a dish of muriatic acid to eat away all impuri- 
ties* The acid boiled and bubbled when the red-hot gold was put in it, 
filling the air with yellow, suffocating fumes, from which Trevaskis 


^04 


THE SILENT SEA 


escaped by retreating for some minutes into the iron passage. Last of 
all he put the gold into an enamelled basin full of water, and washed the 
acid, etc., off with a strong scrubbing brush. Then the pure, massy bar, 
two hundred and fifteen ounces in weight, was ready to be made into 
golden vessels for royal tables, into jewelry for fair women, into wash-hand 
basins for barbarians, into sovereigns for the joy or misery of mankind. 
There it was, without a stain of the earth from which it came, ready to 
feed the hungry and tempt the weak, to clothe the naked and pay the 
wages of sin. 

For ten nights Trevaskis worked with the same brilliant result. Each 
night he watched by his retort and crucible, the flaming fire casting 
strange shadows in the gloomy recesses of the cave room. His eyes, 
which were nearly well when he returned from town, had again become 
much inflamed. When he went about he wore a dark-green shade over 
them, and the protection this afforded was valuable to him, mentally as 
well as physically. He had never before quailed at the sight of any 
man, but now he found it a comfort not to be obliged to speak eye to 
eye with the most insignificant employe at the mine. In the anticipa- 
tion of the purser’s renewed request to search the cave room, Trevaskis 
had a conviction that the excuse he meant to make for delaying the 
event would gather much force from the indifference with which he 
could speak when his eyes were veiled from observation. But day after 
day passed by, and Victor made no sign. He was too deeply preoccupied 
with more delightful thoughts to waste any on a matter so trivial as a 
problematical treasure. But Vansittart, without any strong personal 
interests, and absolutely idle while he waited for his friend, watched and 
thought intently over the little drama which he felt convinced was now 
going on at the Colmar Mine. When he found that day after day Tre- 
vaskis came for his dinner an hour later than the usual time, and did not 
come there at all for breakfast and tea, he knew that the arrangement 
was solely to avoid contact with him, for fear he should make any fur- 
ther allusions to the cave room. 

He occupied a small bedroom opening into the dining-room, with a 
window that overlooked the front veranda. Daily he would station him- 
self at this window, and watch Trevaskis as he came and went away, 
noting every movement and gesture — his eager haste, his anxious abstrac- 
tion, his eyes jealously guarded by the broad green shade. He even 
went, one still, dark night, and watched by the enclosure round the en- 
trance to the cave room, with sleepless vigilance, from ten o’clock till the 
dawn reddened the east ; but not a sound, not a sign, not a gleam of 
light rewarded his long vigil. As a matter of fact, Trevaskis, on this 
particular night, suffered so much from his eyes that he could not face 
his secret night-work. But he exercised such stringent precautions 


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205 


against detection that it may be doubted whether the most vigilant 
watcher would have been able to find a clue to his proceedings. Van- 
sittart, who knew something of the capacities of the cave room for con- 
cealment, felt baffled, but not convinced. He tried his best to rouse 
Victor to some enthusiasm on the subject, but the young man, half in 
impatience and half in fun, at last forbade him ever to mention the 
cave room any more. 

You cast reflections upon stage comedy once,” said Victor ; “ but, at 
any rate, it has this advantage, it comes to an end in a couple of hours, 
whereas yours goes on for weeks at a stretch.” 

You think it’s a comedy ? What I told you about — ” . 

Now, don’t — don’t mention it any more, or I shall change my dinner- 
hour,” said Victor, laughing. ‘‘Your pretending you didn’t know Tre- 
vaskis was a little amusing the first day; but, then, you kept it up too 
long — and now this hidden treasure 1” 

“ Well, never mind ; I’m waiting developments.” 

Next morning Vansittart got a letter from his friend, telling him he 
would be at Nilpeena in two days. He determined to have a say once 
more regarding the cave room in Trevaskis’s presence before leaving the 
Colmar Arms. With this object he told the landlady that they all 
wanted dinner at the later hour on this day. Then he walked across to 
see Victor at his office, as he had done several times before, and chatted 
with him on indifferent topics. 

“ By the way,” he said, as he was leaving, “ Mrs. West wants to know 
if you can make it convenient to come to dinner later to-day. Some 
domestic rupture, I suppose, about having two dinner-times.” 

Victor for the first time doubted the explanation when, after he and 
Trevaskis were seated at the table, Vansittart came into the dining-room. 
There was a look of devilry in his dark eyes that betrayed some latent 
excitement. A moment or two later the three were joined by two men 
who were on their way to Broombush Creek — one of them the manager 
of a company that had started crushing with tolerable results. Trevas- 
kis entered into animated talk with this man on mining. Victor talked 
a little to the other stranger. Vansittart sat on in silence till dinner 
was half over. He looked annoyed, as if his plans had been upset. 
But at last his opportunity came. 

“Ay, it will maybe turn out a great place yet — this Broombush 
Creek,” said the new manager. 

“ And repeat the history of all other places in which gold is found,” 
said Vansittart, in a low-pitched, deliberate voice. 

“ I expect so. Do you know much about gold-mining and diggings, 
sir ?” said the unsuspecting stranger affably. 

“ Yes, a good deal. In fact, I’ve just made my fortune at a gold-miiif^,” 


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This statement produced what the law reporters call a sensation. That 
is, one of the strangers said ‘‘ Oh !” another, “ Indeed !” and both looked 
at Vansittart with the utmost interest. 

A deep flush mounted into Trevaskis’s face. He longed for the shade 
over his eyes. If he had known he would not be alone, he would not 
have removed it when he sat down to dinner. But he went on with his 
meal without once looking at Vansittart. Victor felt sure that a dis» 
agreeable “ development ” was to take place, and, according to the fash- 
ion of his age and sex, he awaited the denouement with a certain amount 
of enjoyment. 

“Yes, gentlemen,’’ said Vansittart, in emphatic tones, “quite a fort- 
une ! The story is a short one, and can be briefly told. I was at a mine 
in a colony not far from here. It seems that one or two previous man- 
agers had been making a pile for themselves in a slightly irregular way. 
Don’t let this surprise you overmuch. I assure you that nature and hu- 
man society abound with bravos who are ready to rob and devour each 
other for the sake of a few mouthfuls and a little gold. Well, there was 
another man employed on this mine, and he went out one day looking 
for daisies. He was young and simple, and loved daisies to distraction ; 
in fact, he had as many illusions as a young girl, and this was one of 
them. He did not find any daisies that day, but he found another man. 
Now, I am sure it is very inartistic to keep on finding another man in 
this way ; but, being neither a poet nor a comedian, I have to take things 
as they happened. Well, the man who didn’t find a daisy came back to 
the mine that day, and he said to me, 

“ ‘ There’s gold hidden in an old cave room here — so I’m told. Shall 
I go and have a look V 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said I, ‘ as many looks as you like — next week.’ 

“ However, I thought I’d have a glance myself beforehand, and alone ; 
and what do you suppose I found?” 

“ Broken bottles,” said the new manager, laughing. 

“ Old tailings,” said the other man, also laughing. 

“A diamond as big as an emu-egg,” said Victor, joining in the mirth. 

“ Won’t you give a guess too, sir?” said Vansittart, looking fixedly at 
Trevaskis. 

Trevaskis was by this time livid in the face, but he still made a feint 
of eating. On being thus directly addressed by his tormentor, he gave a 
hoarse little laugh and said, 

“ Perhaps you found as big a fool as yourself.” 

“No, sir; I’m afraid that, in some respects, would be impossible,” re- 
turned Vansittart, with unmoved urbanity. “ But I’ll tell you what I did 
find. I found white gold in heaps and heaps — in hundredweights, I 
may say— and I went night after night and made it into yellow gold — 


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207 


into gold yellower than sovereigns and purer than wedding-rings. And 
I said to that young man, 

“ ‘ You go and find some daisies for yourself. As for going into that 
enclosed room — a horrid cave and very inconvenient — don’t think of it !’ 

“ Mind you, gentlemen, I had that receptacle under lock and key. . . . 
So now I’m like the lilies who neither toil nor spin.” 

“ I’m afraid you’re taking a rise out of us,” said the man who sat next 
Victor. 

Trevaskis, who had finished eating, sat with his hands tightly clasped 
underneath the table. But though he could not entirely command their 
tremor, he kept his voice well under control. 

“ If I wanted to stuff a greenhorn with a tall mining yarn, I w'ouldn’t 
have far to go to better that,” he said sneeringly. 

“ Very likely ; but, you see, I’m limited to facts, sir,” returned Vansit- 
tart, with grave politeness. 

Then they all rose from the table, Trevaskis and the manager who was 
going to Broombush Creek exchanging hopes, as they parted, of seeing 
each other on future occasions. 

As Victor left the room Vansittart followed him to the door. 

“I’m going away to-morrow, Fitz-Gibbon, to meet my friend at Nil- 
peena ; so that’s the last scene of the * comedy,’ as far as I am con- 
cerned. What did you think of the development?” 

“ I fear your audience wasn’t educated up to enjoying it. That young 
simpleton, for instance, who doted on daisies. Confound you ! I owe 
you one for that, old fellow.” 

They both laughed. 

“ I wonder,” said Vansittart, “ whether the curtain conceals a tableau 
of this little drama that will interest you more ! Mind, you must tell 
me — if ever we meet again after to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER XXVIL 

On his way back to the oflice, Victor saw ’Zilla Jenkins standing at 
the door of his new weather-board cottage, which had been put together 
during the past few days. 

“ Come and ’ave a look at the residence, sir. I’m that pleased I want 
to dance the letterpooch all over it !” he cried. 

It was a snug little place, with well-fitting doors and windows. ’Zilla’s 
broad, massive face shone with the pride of proprietorship, as he showed 
Victor over the three rooms. 


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This ’all be the kitchen. I’m putting up a dresser with a few boards. 
The missus would come next week, but I want her to wait till this illness 
is over at the mine. Some says as it’s catchin’.” 

‘‘ But isn’t this your time for being asleep, ’Zilla ?” asked Victor, after 
he had admired the neatly planed shelves and the superiorities of a dwell- 
ing that kept out dust and wind. 

“Iss, sir; but a man don’t want so much sleep when he ’ave a place 
like this to put in order. Snell’s ’ouse ’ull soon be ready, too — and badly 
they need it. They say the youngest child is very ill, and there’s more 
being took bad at the mine.” 

The Snells were the invalids for whom Doris had the cottage ordered. 
It was now being put together not far from ’Zilla’s abode. It occurred to 
Victor that he would ask Doris and Euphemia to come and see how this 
new addition to the mine was progressing, as soon as his work was over 
for the afternoon. He had not been at his desk more than five minutes, 
when Mick came with a message that Trevaskis wished to see him in his 
ofiice. The moment Victor entered, the manager turned on him, his face 
distorted with rage. 

“ I want to know,” he said in a loud, insolent tone, “ why you are con- 
spiring to treat me with contempt.” 

Victor, on hearing the tone in which he spoke, looked at Trevaskis in 
amazement. 

‘‘ Pardon me, but I don’t understand your speech nor your manner,” 
he answered. 

“ No ; but perhaps you’ll understand both before we part,” said Tre- 
vaskis. He was not only in a great rage, but he was using purposely 
offensive language, with the hope that Fitz-Gibbon would, in a moment 
of anger, throw up his pursership, or commit some grave breach of dis- 
cipline which would furnish a pretext for asking him to resign. 

On hearing the last remark Victor’s nostrils quivered, and a gleaming 
light came into his eyes. 

“ I decline to bandy personalities. Will you kindly explain what you 
mean by saying I conspire to treat you with contempt?” 

“ I mean your conduct with that blackguard, Vansittart ; telling him 
tales about the mine — setting him on at me about that damned cave 
room, and then sitting grinning — ” 

“You are talking utter nonsense, and I think you must know it. I 
never told Vansittart anything about the mine ; I never set him on to 
you. Why should I ? Do you suppose, if I wanted to say anything to 
you, I wouldn’t say it to your face?” 

“ It’s conduct I won’t put up with, turning me into ridicule. I’ve 
never suffered any one to do so before, and, by God ! I won’t now,” said 
Trevaskis, rising as he spoke. 


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209 


‘‘ I think we had better finish this talk when you have recovered your 
memory,” said Victor, beginning to be very angry in his turn. 

“What do you mean by that — what about my memory?” cried Tre- 
vaskis, drawing his breath hard. 

“You made a certain accusation — I denied it entirely; yet you still 
repeat your ungrounded assertion. You forget that you are talking to a 
gentleman. That is what I mean by saying your memory has failed 
you,” answered Victor, looking steadily in Trevaskis’s face. 

“ And you forget that you are talking to your superior officer,” re- ^ 
torted Trevaskis, still using the tones of an angry man. But it was be- 
coming clear to him that his shots had missed their mark, and that, in 
making charges based only on suspicion, he had placed himself in a false 
position. 

“ I think not,” answered Victor. “ I do not see that it is part of my 
official duty to listen to unwarranted accusations without denying them.” 

“ Then do you say that nothing at all has passed between you and Van- 
sittart about me and the mine?” 

“Pardon me, but that isn’t the question. You began by accusing me 
of conspiring to treat you with contempt. I do not hold myself responsi- 
ble for what Vansittart may or may not say.” 

“ Then I’ll ask you one thing. Did you know nothing of the attack 
he was going to make on me to-day, by insinuating that I was getting 
gold in the underground room ?” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ And yet you purposely changed your dinner-hour — and that scoun- 
drel was with you in the office for some time this morning — as if you 
hadn’t time enough to concoct your schemes — ” 

“ You are using exceedingly offensive language, and you are again re- 
turning to the charge I have denied. I went to dinner later because Mr. 
Vansittart told me that this was the landlady’s wish.” 

“ He is a liar ! If he attempts to insult me again as he did to-day. I’ll 
break every bone in his body. I think, as you are so fond of his society, 
it might be as well to tell him that from me.” 

“ Excuse me, but I shall do nothing of the sort. I suppose you are 
not afraid to deliver your own messages,” returned Victor, laying a ma- 
licious emphasis on the word “ afraid.” 

“ Afraid — damn your eyes 1 I’ll show you whether I’m afraid.” 

“Damn your eyes ! show it as soon as you like.” 

The two were by this time equally infuriated, and stood glaring at 
each other with venomous eyes. 

“ I shall report you to the office. You think because your uncle is a 
director that you can play the master here.” 

“You must do as you think fit about reporting me,” answered Victor; 

14 


210 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ but remember that this disagreement has nothing to do with my work 
as purser. It is altogether owing to insinuations thrown out by Van- 
sittart regarding that cave room. As we are on the subject, I may tell 
you straight that, all things considered, I should think it more satisfac- 
tory for me to search that place, as you agreed I should some time ago.” 

And I may tell you in return that, until the late manager’s things 
are removed, I shall not have that place touched. I never thought much 
of the rumor from the first ; but now that I know who’s at the bottom 
of it, I wouldn’t give a continental oath for the snivelling yarn.” 

“ I don’t quite agree with you there ; for my own part, I should feel 
inclined to advise the company to have a thorough search made,” said 
Victor. For the first time, the thought took hold of his mind that Van- 
sittart’s suspicions might not be unfounded, as he considered how very 
inadequate w^as the reason given for delay, more especially as Trevaskis 
had at first suggested that Dunning’s effects should be removed into one 
of the store-rooms, and now assigned no reason why the plan should not 
be adopted. 

‘‘Well, if I believed as much in your friend Vansittart as you do, per- 
haps I should feel the same,” returned Trevaskis, with a forced laugh. 
“ But, you see, I don’t — perhaps I know a little too much about him — 
and at any rate I’m not going to meddle with Dunning’s things till his 
brother comes.” 

The mine engineer knocked at the door just then, and came in to con- 
sult the manager about part of the machinery which was not working well. 

“ I suppose I had better return to my office, then,” said Victor, as he 
withdrew. 

The manager followed him out. 

“ I was in a bad scot when you first came in, Fitz-Gibbon,” he said, 
in a conciliatory tone. “But I see that I was too hasty. We’ll just 
go on as we were, and think no more about the matter.” 

Victor did not respond very cordially. Once his wrath was aroused 
he was apt to be vindictive. “The impertinent under-bred cad” were 
the words with which he described Trevaskis, as he returned to his 
office. Then he sat down and wrote a note, in which he called on him 
for a written apology for the insinuations he had made — first as to his 
conduct, then as to his veracity. After he had relieved his feelings in 
this way he tore up the letter. He would not risk making a final breach 
between himself and Trevaskis. 

“ I should most likely have to go if I made this into a big row,” he 
reflected, “ and I don’t want to do that till Doris leaves with the Chal- 
loners. It won’t be so very long now. Still, I should like to take a 
rise out of this fellow for his insolence.” As he thought over the 
matter, he hit on a diplomatic way of doing this. 


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211 


There was a letter from his uncle, chiefly on business details, which 
had been unanswered for more than a week. Victor wrote an exhaust- 
ive and concise reply to this, and towards the close said : “ Things are 
going on prosperously at the mine. Now that I have got well into the 
work, I And I have a good deal of spare time on my hands. I should 
like to spend some of it in that old underground place of which I told 
you. If the search turns out to be unremunerative, I should be willing 
to pay any extra labor I employ out of my own pocket. The only ob- 
stacle now is that some of the late manager’s effects are stowed there, 
and Trevaskis has some scruples about interfering with them till Dun- 
ning’s brother takes possession. But there is ample room in one of the 
unused offices, in which the articles in question could be kept under lock 
and key. An order from the office to shift them would relieve Mr. Tre- 
vaskis of any responsibility in the matter, and give me the chance I 
wish for, before my time at the mine is up. I shall be glad, therefore, 
if you give instructions to the secretary to this effect, without delay. I 
did not at flrst attach much importance to the matter, but a man who was 
employed here during Webster’s tenure of oflSce is certain that gold was 
concealed in the place in question, and some events which I would rather 
not commit to writing have of late made me incline to the same belief.” 

As Victor read this over before closing the letter, he felt satisfied that 
it would effect his object. If after the order came for removing Dun- 
ning’s effects Trevaskis still invented objections, it would be pretty evi- 
dent that he had some sinister motive, and that the sooner action was 
taken on behalf of the company the better. It was only when Victor 
was crossing the reef, on his way to Stonehouse, that all thoughts of 
the disagreeable scene between himself and Trevaskis were replaced by 
pleasanter musings. It was close on sunset, and he lingered on the crest 
of the reef as if lost in contemplation of the scene before him. It was 
now well on in November, and week by week the days were getting 
warmer, the sky paler and more cloudless, the Salt-bush more deeply 
coated with dust, the spaces between the bushes barer, and baked in 
places into a more vivid tinge of red. As the summer came in, the 
prospects of later rains lessened. During the previous twelve months 
only eight inches had fallen in the district. The hot winds were fre- 
quent, fraying and mangling the gray-green salt-bush, till it looked in 
some places like neutral-tinted fodder trampled under foot. Tall clumps 
of overblown mallows were beaten to the ground in pallid masses of sere 
leaves; and in all the wide desolation of the vast plains no sign of life 
was to be seen, except the trailing clouds of dust that hung perpetually 
in these days above the road that led to the new diggings. It was a 
strange, weird scene, but it is questionable whether any of its features 
caught the young man’s eyes. 


212 


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He was looking througli the avenue that surrounded Stonehouse, 
when suddenly his face was lit with a warm glow. 

“ There she is ! Oh, my beautiful darling !” he murmured, looking at 
her with all his soul in his eyes. Then he went a few paces to the left, 
so that he might see Doris better as she stood looking westward, across 
the gray, limitless plain, above which the sun, in going down, seemed to 
set the sky on flame. Doris had a letter in her hands, and her dogs 
were close beside her. Spot evidently doing his best to decoy her into 
walking with him. But his mistress was more irresponsive than usual. 
Even at the distance which separated them, it seemed to Victor there 
was something pensive and fixed in her attitude. Would she look up 
with a happy smile when she saw him? Of late he had got into the 
habit of expecting this, and he was seldom disappointed. But was it 
the gladness of mere friendliness or — Victor did not finish the con- 
jecture, for Spot had run to meet him at the gate, and now Doris saw 
him, and their eyes met. 

“You were reading a letter. Don’t let me disturb yon,” he said, 
making a movement to pass on, and then lingering to pat the dogs and 
ask Spot if he had been stolen again. 

“ Oh, it is only the one I was going to send you.” 

“Then post it to me at once, please, or be the postmaster. I am 
come to see if there are any letters for me.” 

She gave him the open sheet, looking at him with a half-shy, half- 
amused smile. 

“You know, when people are anxious about their letters, they 
always read them at the post-oflSce,” Victor said, as he began to read. 
There were a few preliminary formal phrases, and then the writer 
said, 

“You must not expect a very interesting letter, for I feel too old now 
to make up fairy fables, and nothing happens here but people passing 
in crowds to search for gold, or crushing stone for it at the Colmar 
Mine, with machinery that goes on day and night. Nothing but this, 
and the rising and setting of the sun, moon, and stars, the sky growing 
red and pale by turns. It is all so dreadfully bare — there are not even 
long shadows ; and always the immense, naked plains — the strange, silent 
sea, without waves or ships, with no sounds but the voices of the wind, 
when the hot wind blows all day and cries all night. Does it take all 
the leaves, the buds, the waters, all the water-fowl and the honey-birds, 
and the beautiful blossoms, to make gold down deep in the earth, or 
lying in nuggets near the surface? For that is nearly all that is to be 
found here, and it cannot be worth so much as that. . . .” 

“ May I keep this letter for my own ?” asked Victor, after reading it 
to the end. 


THE SILENT SEA 


213 


“ Oh, yes ; but do you care for it ? Do you think if I wrote one like 
that to Raoul — ” 

‘‘ No ; don’t write it to any one else. Let it be only for me,” said 
Victor, with so vehement a note of entreaty in his voice that Doris 
looked up at him quickly, with a little expression of wonder in her eyes. 

I suppose you think I am very selfish,” he said ; “ but sometimes — 
when I think of your going away — ” 

“Do you think of that, too? I do often — I am sometimes sorry. 
But as for letters, I used to think that I would never keep any.” 

“ What made you think so ?” 

“Because they seem to make people sad afterwards. . . . Perhaps 
if one lives long enough, everything makes one sad.” 

“ That is a dreadful little heretic of a thought.” 

“A heretic? That means one of the wrong faith ?” 

“Yes. The right faith for your thoughts is that everything is to 
love you and serve you and make you happy.” 

She smiled a little, and then said refiectively,’ 

“ I think my thoughts are seldom very sad now.” 

She was little given to analyzing her own thoughts, but it was un- 
doubtedly the case that of late something of her old, spontaneous gayety 
had returned. 

During the week that followed, Victor obtained Mrs. Challoner’s 
consent to take Doris and Euphemia out riding early in the morning. 
Challoner was much occupied in disposing of what was left to him of 
his sheep and cattle. He was engaged each day on some part of the 
run with men who came to buy or look at the stock. He might as 
well give them away as take the prices offered, he said. He seemed 
depressed and out of sorts, and his wife longed for the day when he 
would finally leave the scene of so much financial disaster. In the 
meantime he was unable to take the girls out riding. 

“Let me, Mrs. Challoner. I know every inch of the ground about 
here now. You can trust them to my care, can’t you ?” pleaded Victor. 
And when, to the unconcealed satisfaction of all three, the request was 
granted, Victor felt assured that the arrangement had come bodily out 
of the heart of the “ Arabian Nights,” or some equally enchanted region, 
in which the sun rose chiefly to compass adventures, untouched by the 
prose of the ordinary world. 

Morning by morning he would awake with the dawn, get into a knock- 
about suit of clothes, and go into the stable to groom the horses with 
Shung-Loo’s help. Then, by the time he had his bath and was dressed, 
the girls would be ready in their riding-habits, and Shung-Loo, in his 
linen suit, impeccable as though no duties had ever been performed by 
him beyond treading on carpets, with a dainty Japanese tray in his 


214 


THE SILENT SEA 


hands, would bring in cups of chocolate, and a plate of delicious little 
flaky cakes, of which the secret seemed destined to die with him. 
“ Many a man has immortalized himself for less than making such cakes,” 
Victor said more than once, and, finding that they had no distinctive 
names, he christened them “ Shung-Loos.” 

When I have a house of my own,” he declared one morning, ‘‘ there 
will always be a plate of ‘Shung-Loos’ on the breakfast-table.” 

But Shung-Loo won’t be there to make them,” observed Euphemia 
practically. 

“Now, how are you so sure about that?” asked Victor, a dancing 
light in his eyes. 

“ Oh, because he’ll always be with Doris, and she’ll be away on the 
other side of the world.” 

“And do you suppose I’ll be tied by one leg to the mine all my life, 
like one of those chuckies of yours who refuse to lay two eggs a day ?” 

It must be observed en parenthese that Euphemia, though not yet a 
“ notable housewife,” kept a keen lookout on the fowls, and when she 
suspected one of them of making a felonious nest for herself in a casual, 
unknown salt-bush, she promptly tied the defaulter by the leg near a 
domestic nest, till her evil habits were abandoned and she had sorrow- 
fully taken the truth to heart that the way of transgressors is hard. 

“ No, of course you’ll not always be at the mine ; but won’t your 
house be in Adelaide?” said Euphemia, generously ignoring the gibe 
regarding her chuckies. 

“ Oh, not necessarily. A little event will sometimes change the course 
of one’s life — a book, or a sermon, or a couple of verses. With me it’s 
the Shung-Loo cakes. I must fix my house near enough to borrow 
Shung. ‘ V. Fitz-Gibbon presents his compliments to Miss Lindsay, and 
will she be kind enough to lend him her Celestial man-servant for an 
hour and a half ?’ That will be the sort of note I’ll be after writing day 
by day.” 

They all laughed over this, and the joke was often taken up afterwards. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

One morning they went as far as the broken-down whim, and spoke 
to each other at a little distance, so as to hear the strange, distinct echoes, 
that had a curiously mocking, ironical undertone. 

“ It is what we say, but not our voices,” said Doris. “ This rock has 
a voice that has no kindness in it.” 


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215 


“You will remember it w'hen we go away,” said Euphemia, a little 
way off. 

“ Away ! away !” The words died slowly, with a suspicion of laughter 
in the dying syllables, but laughter without mirth. Victor, who had 
reined his horse in close beside Doris, thought he saw her face falling a 
little at the word. 

“ If the voice has no kindness, it has sorrow,” he said. “ If you were 
going away and I had to stay at the mine — ” 

“ Aren’t you going to stay after we go away ?” she said, looking up 
quickly. 

He had been on the eve of telling her a hundred times before, and a 
hundred times he had checked himself ; but the temptation was then too 
strong. 

“ What I should like to do would be to leave on the same day, and go 
down by the same train from Nilpeena, and then take passage in the 
same ship by which you go.” 

“ And come all the way — to France ? Oh, that would be charming ! 
It would be no longer the Silent Sea then, as this is.” 

She looked round beyond the echoing rock, northward and south- 
ward, where the great expanse of gray, naked land was in the distance 
half concealed by a light mist, which veiled the inequalities of the low 
reefs. 

Then she looked back at Victor, who was watching her face intently. 

“ Why should you not come ? Your mother is across the sea, and — ” 

“ I am coming,” he said, his heart beating hard. 

“ Oh, I am so glad !” Her voice, with its spontaneous gayety, thrilled 
the young man with a sudden keenness of emotion that almost bordered 
on pain. 

They were both silent for a little, a vague half-consciousness invading 
the girl’s serenity. 

And then Euphemia’s robust, cheerful voice came from a little dis- 
tance, awakening sudden, startling reverberations in the echoing rock. 

“ What can that be over there ?” she cried, pointing with her riding- 
whip in a southerly direction. 

“Over there,” echoed the rock, with its sinister after-notes. 

Here beside it, their horses for a moment held in check, were two 
young creatures, with radiant eyes and quickly throbbing pulses, a vague 
mist of happiness on their faces, all the glad possibilities of life seem- 
ing to lie around them like sheathed buds. But what was there “ over 
there ” ? 

“ I do not much like your echoing rock,” said Doris, as they rode up 
to Euphemia, to see what had attracted her attention. 

“ It is a little hut — one of the weather-board kind, I suppose,” said 


216 


THE SILENT SEA 


Victor, “ for it was not there six days ago. Some one must have taken 
up a claim, but diggers don’t generally put up a hut of any sort. Why, 
this is going to be one great gold-field,” he added, as he looked around, 
and noticed that a mile or two away from the broken-down whim, tow- 
ards the north, on the road to Broombush Creek, a large, irregular edifice 
was in course of erection. 

“That must be the place Mrs. West’s brother is putting up,” he said. 
“ She told me it is to be called the Half-way House, because it is about 
half way between Colmar and the diggings.” 

“ Couldn’t we go as far as the diggings this morning?” said Euphemia. 
“ Mother said the other day we might go within sight of it.” 

Doris, however, objected on the ground that she wanted to get back a 
little earlier than usual, because of something she wanted to do for the 
Connell children. This was a second family in which two children had 
lately fallen ill. Sickness had of late been spreading at the mine, and 
Dr. Magann, who had removed from the partially deserted Kidges, bring- 
ing with him his movable wooden dwelling, announced that the malady, 
which had attacked several adults as well as children, was in some cases 
slow fever, in others typhoid. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t visit these poor people so often,” said Victor, 
as they turned homeward. 

“Why do you wish that?” 

“ Because I don’t like to see you out in the dust and heat, going into 
places where they have fever.” 

“ But you ought not to wish that I were selfish,” she answered, look- 
ing at him with grave seriousness. “ When I see these poor people’s 
hot, bare, untidy little huts and tents, and then come back to Stonehouse, 
and think how I have had everything soft and pleasant all my life, I feel 
as if I could not bear to have so much and they so little.” 

“ But you have sent all your own easy-chairs to the sick people, Doris, 
so there’s one thing you have not got more than they have,” said Eu- 
phemia bluntly. 

Victor, on hearing this, stole a look af Doris that had in it much of 
the respectful adoration with which devout people regard a patron saint. 
Indeed, to him those radiant eyes, full of sweet tenderness for all suifer- 
ing, were holier than those of any saint in the calendar. 

“I think, though, mother is getting frightened that you might take 
the illness, for you had fever when you were a little girl, and might get 
it again, so perhaps it will be only Shung and me who’ll go with flowers 
and things,” Euphemia went on, after a pause. She was very loath to 
turn her back on the “ diggings ” for the sake of the invalids. 

On hearing this, Victor’s uneasiness increased. 

“ But really, you know, the people at our mine are not so badly off. 


THE SILENT SEA 


217 


They all have plenty of food and fresh air, though perhaps a little too 
much dust and mullock. And now that ’Zilla has lent his cottage to the 
Connells — he won’t bring his wife while there is so much illness — none 
of the larger families are in tents or one-roomed huts. And if they 
would only boil the water before they drank it, it wouldn’t hurt them. 
Besides, you know, they are very kind in helping one another,” he 
added, trying to imbue Doris with a stronger motive for being reconciled 
to Mrs. Challoner’s wishes than the fear of personal danger would be 
likely to afiEord. 

“ I cannot do very much,” she answered, but I like to sit by the sick 
children and do little things for them — put a few flowers into a pretty 
vase where they can look at them. You should see their eyes when they 
see those Provence roses that come from your friends in Adelaide ! If 
I gave them to the mother, she would most likely put them down some- 
where and let them fade. Mrs. Snell would not do that — she knows 
how the children love flowers ; but Mrs. Connell does not seem to un- 
derstand.” 

“ She keeps on gossiping with the other women ; she doesn’t mind the 
children properly, nor keep the house clean, nor anything,” broke in Eu- 
phemia, with a note of indignation in her voice. But Doris seemed to 
shrink from direct fault-finding. In small things, as in great, she had 
that gentle charity which leads the rare natures endowed with it to re- 
gard the defects of their fellow-creatures with invincible forbearance. 
Pity, and sympathy, and long-suffering, and fair interpretation, and 
excusing our brother, and taking things in the best sense, and passing 
the gentlest sentence, was the girl’s inalienable inheritance from her 
mother. 

In the end Victor felt rebuked, as he realized that there was a taint of 
selfishness in his anxiety that Doris might be spared even the thought 
of squalor or suffering or hardship. Her impulse to give not merely 
money, or the things that money could buy, but a part of her own life, 
her own gentle ministering, made him reflect penitently on his partial 
indifference to such matters, while largely absorbed in happy thoughts 
and happy plans for the future. Gradually, contact with her enlarged 
his moral consciousness. He felt that the things to desire most for 
Doris’s sake were not luxury and ease, but that one’s own heart and 
nature should be touched to finer issues, so as to be more worthy of her 
companionship. 

But these early morning rides were by no means always tinged with 
grave thoughts and reflections. They would often break into songs, and 
laughter when one of them failed to catch up the tune, as they rode 
through the exhilarating morning air, their horses’ hoofs seeming to keep 
time in a perpetual refrain ; and on other occasions Doris would recount 


218 


THE SILENT SEA 


one of the stories Shung-Loo told her when she was a little girl, begin- 
ning after this fashion : 

“There was once a Lah-to prince who bribed the world with elephant- 
tusks, and oxen with humps, and buffaloes that live in the water. When 
he went out he was surrounded with flags, and the sky was full of feather 
fans, and the big kingfisher birds came and made umbrellas of their 
wings. And two-and-twenty elephants came in a train after him, loaded 
with big cowries to give to the poor people, and sixteen cowries was the 
price for a bowl of rice. At night men with gold on their teeth played 
flutes, and women in gold chains sang songs to make him go to sleep. 
Then when he slept the black barbarians, who wear only their skins, a 
handkerchief, and no sandals, each with a peach-blossom fan — ” 

“ Oh, Doris, a peach-blossom fan, when they had no clothes !” remon- 
strated Enphemia. 

“ That’s the way it is in the Shih Ch’ing ya ch’ii,” answered Doris ; 
“ and as you don’t believe every word without asking questions, you can- 
not hear any more.” 

This was a hard saying, but Doris was forced to adhere to the rule, 
for the reason that Shung-Loo had been inexorable in its observance. 

“ Well, you ought to finish it for Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, for he believes 
every word and never asks any questions,” urged Euphemia, which was 
true to the letter. For always when Doris spoke, her soft, musical voice, 
with its varying intonations giving emphasis to all the grotesque little 
nuances of Shung-Loo’s stories, fascinated Victor — if that were possible 
— more than ever. He would listen in rapt silence, stealing a glance 
from time to time at the darkling little shadows cast by those heavy 
lashes, at the delicately moulded cheeks, to which exercise had brought 
a delicate damask glow. And as he listened and looked, it seemed as if 
he had in absolute fact penetrated one of those charmed regions of Ori- 
ental supernaturalism whose lore so curiously hung about the girl’s soli- 
tary childhood. 

How completely, how dangerously happy he was! The poet upon 
whom the Muses, keeping ward over Mount Helicon, and dancing with 
delicate feet round the violet-hued fount, bestowed laurel-leaves, a staff 
of luxuriant olives, and the breath of an inspired voice, saw a vision of 
the beginning of all things, in which the earth gave birth to the starry 
heavens, that they might shelter it upon all sides, and so make it for- 
ever a secure seat for the blessed gods. But this was the revelation of 
a singer born into the world in its nonage, before the story of man’s 
darkly stained, incomprehensible existence had filled so many sombre 
tomes, and before so many wise men had risen up to prove to us that 
there are no gods. Yet from generation to generation there come brief 
spaces into most lives in which the old poetic tradition is verified, and 


THE SILENT SEA 


219 


the earth is once more a secure seat for the blessed gods. Yes, even in 
regions where nature is as arid and destitute of charm as is the Salt-bush 
country, where, though the air, the sky, and the sunshine are early in the 
day perfect in their loveliness, yet the earth in its level, neutral-tinted 
barrenness is more like a vague outline than a finished picture. . . . Now, 
after two weeks of these long, early rides, they were coming to an end, 
though the riders did not know it. 

On the last occasion they rode close to Broombush Creek, very early 
in the morning, and saw the diggings, with now close on five thousand 
men at work. They passed the Half-way House, a low, rambling struct- 
ure of wood and galvanized iron, the bar already open for travellers ; 
its sign-board — a piece of calico stretched on a board nailed over the door 
— bore the inscription, “ Half-way House. T. Smith : Licensed to sell 
wines, bears, sperits,” in letters of extraordinary variety as to size. In 
half an hour after passing this the outskirts of the diggings came in 
sight, and a medley of confused sounds broke the calm of early morning. 

The continual rumble of diggers’ cradles, the ring of shrill voices, of 
axes cleaving wood, of sawing and hammering, of creaking water-carts, 
carting tanks of water from the one permanent well, which was over a 
mile from the centre of the diggings, all made up a great volume of 
sound. The scene altogether conveyed an indescribable impression of 
confusion. The diggers’ tents were of the motliest — dingy canvas, 
duck, calico, even sacking and hessian, roughly cobbled together; old tar- 
paulins also were fastened over vehicles of every size and description. 
Among these there was a sprinkling of iron edifices, chiefly stores, board- 
ing-houses, and government offices. The telegraph line had been ex- 
tended from Colmar, and the post and telegraph office, with the quarters 
of the warden of Goldfields and the police troopers, a branch bank, 
etc., were near the centre of the wide, irregular encampment. A public 
hospital had been built, with a medical man in charge. But typhoid 
fever had broken out, and the accommodation was inadequate for the in- 
creasing patients. A private hospital was now in course of erection, on 
a slight rise near the road by which one approached the new diggings 
from Colmar. Everywhere all round the earth was turned over in mounds, 
and everywhere men were sinking and tunnelling in the ground, with 
shovels, gads, pickaxes, and crow-bars. Machinery had been erected in 
two places, and already the sound of the batteries was heard. For the 
sun was now rising, and all hands were hard at work. 

The sky, so clear and immensely vaulted, full of warm, pale-blue air, 
with that look of youth inseparable from pure and joyous coloring, 
formed the strangest contrast to the world which it overarched here — 
where the ash-gray salt-bush was replaced by tumbled heaps of soil, and 
by the squalid abodes of thousands of dirt-stained men. The immense 


220 


THE SILENT SEA 


flat, featureless landscape all round held nothing to break the sharpness 
of the contrast between the heaven above, majestic in its noble sweep of 
outline, and the earth below, gray and formless and naked, as if it had 
been worn into sallow desolation by the march of countless aeons of cen- 
turies, till in this spot it was torn and mangled by an irruption of strange 
reptiles that had learned the use of tools. 

As the riders stood at some little distance looking on, a great shout 
was heard in the vicinity of the hospital, where some diggers were at 
work. The shout was taken up by others near. 

‘‘ A boomer nugget ! a boomer nugget !” 

The cry flew like wildfire, and strange excitement ensued. From 
every quarter men came running and crying out; those who were at 
work throwing down their tools ; those who had been preparing break- 
fast, some with flour on their arms up to their elbows, with steaks or 
chops in their hands, as they were about to put them on the coals, grid- 
irons; or fry-pans, with dish-cloths on their arms, with soiled tin plates 
in their hands — some even with handfuls of tea which they were about 
to put in teapots, or billies, or quart pots. When that shrill, sudden cry 
reached them, there were scores who did not wait to put these things 
down, but rushed as they stood, as if fearful that this lump of yellow 
metal, speckled over with quartz, might vanish like a celestial visitant 
before the sight of it gladdened their eyes. There were some who even 
ran half naked as they tumbled out of their beds, with dishevelled hair, 
strained eyes, and naked feet. 

When they had all satisfied themselves that this thing was true, and 
not a dream or a false rumor, then the great hubbub increased, and the 
clamor of voices swelled on the air mightily. But after a little this died 
away, and gave place to a feverish industry that nerved thousands as one 
man. There were many who did not taste food that morning for hours. 
They gulped down pannikins full of hot tea, and then worked on with 
frenzied haste. Might they not at any moment come upon a boomer 
nugget — turn it over in the dirt, or hear the dull thud of their tools as 
they struck against a solid lump of the precious metal ? Many who had 
been on the point of leaving, sickened and wearied out with toiling for 
weeks and finding not even the color of gold, while they lived on credit 
or the generosity of their fellow- workers, now took heart of grace, and 
stayed to labor on with renewed energy. Others, who had been lying 
ill of fever for days or weeks, crawled out of their bunks, and sat watch- 
ing their mates at work with hungry, wistful eyes ; for who could tell 
whose luck it would be next to come on a big nugget? It is the gam- 
bling element that lends so strong a fascination to digging for gold, not 
the naked lust for its possession, as one is apt at first to suppose, on wit- 
nessing the sort of humiliating frenzy that oftentimes takes possession 


THE SILENT SEA 


221 


of men when searching for it in its primitive and most enchanting 
form. 

When the sudden tumult had subsided, the riders turned their horses’ 
heads homeward. 

“ Wherever men come to this country they make it ugly,” said Doris. 
“ Instead of planting gardens or trees, or digging for water, they make 
dreadful holes and spoil the salt-bush.” 

“ I was just thinking I should like to go and make dreadful holes my- 
self,” said Victor, smiling, “ At any rate, they don’t spoil much in 
spoiling the salt-bush.” 

“The salt-bush is a very good creature,” said Euphemia quickly. 
“ Cows that eat it give good milk, the hens lay good eggs, salt-bush 
sheep make the best mutton, and the sky is nowhere more beautiful.” 

Euphemia was born in the Salt-bush country, and it would seem that 
in the hearts of most human beings Heaven has implanted a love for the 
spot in which they first see light — a token, perhaps, that life is a gift, 
notwithstanding our many and bitter feuds therewith. 

As the sun ascended the heavens they returned on their “ happy morn- 
ing track,” all unconscious that it was the last of those excursions. 

“You will remember Broombush Creek in the old world,” said Vic- 
tor, as he helped Doris to dismount. 

“ Yes. I am so glad that you are coming, too. I think of that so 
often !” she answered, in a low voice. 

The words sent the blood tingling through his veins and surging in 
his ears. He was intoxicated with joy as he walked away. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

Doris and Euphemia hastened to get out of their riding-habits and 
dress for breakfast. They were a little later than usual on account of 
their long ride, and they were consequently much surprised, when they 
went into the dining-room, to find that, though breakfast was ready, and 
Shung-Loo in his accustomed place behind his young mistress’s chair, 
neither Mr. nor Mrs. Challoner had yet appeared. Presently Mrs. Chal- 
loner came in, looking very fagged and anxious. Her husband had 
hardly slept all night. Towards morning he had fallen into a troubled 
sleep, and now he had wakened up with a burning headache and slightly 
delirious. She had been anxious regarding him for several days, notic- 
ing that an unusual languor hung about him, and that he neither ate nor 
slept well. But he had made light of all this, saying it was only a little 


222 


THE SILENT SEA 


overwork, and that working too much between meals did not now agree 
with him. He had refused to consult the doctor, partly because he was 
very busy disposing of his stock just then, and partly because something 
to be shaken up every two hours had never done him any good when he 
was out of sorts. 

The doctor was now sent for, and promptly confirmed Mrs. Challoner’s 
fears. It was fever — most likely typhoid — and the patient was worse 
because he had not ‘‘caved in” as soon as he ought. He had, judging 
from symptoms, been working for a week with the fever hanging about 
him. 

“ Oh, my dear, I think I ought to send you to Adelaide, or perhaps 
back to Ouranie, till the worst is over,” said Mrs. Challoner to Doris in 
the afternoon, when, her husband having fallen into a sleep, she came 
into the drawing-room, where the two girls were arranging how they 
could best help in the trouble that had fallen on the household. 

“Go away ! — when you want all the help we can give you ! Oh, Mrs. 
Lucy, how can you even think of it?” said Doris imploringly. 

Then Mrs. Challoner, who was very tired and very anxious, cried a 
little, and confessed it would be a great comfort, she knew, to have Doris 
in the house. On this Doris made her lie on the couch, and bathed her 
temples softly with eau-de-Cologne, and after a little Mrs. Challoner fell 
into a deep sleep, and Euphemia took her place in the sick-room. It 
was nearly sunset when Mrs. Challoner awoke, much refreshed. 

“ You always had wonderful little hands for soothing headaches away,” 
she said to Doris, who now went on to tell her that she and Euphemia 
had been making certain plans. Doris was to take all household cares 
off Mrs. Challoner’s hands, and Shung-Loo would help to nurse part of 
each night, and Euphemia part of each day. Shung would have noth- 
ing else to do, but have his whole time for Mrs. Challoner, and she was 
never to go too long without sleep and rest. 

“ Then, my dear, as I understand it, you are going to do all my work, 
and allow Shung to do nothing for you,” said Mrs. Challoner, looking at 
the girl with dimmed eyes. 

“ Yes, I am going to be the housekeeper,” answered Doris undaunt- 
edly ; “go to sleep quite early, and get up early in the morning and 
waken Bridget, and see that she does things nicely, and always has hot 
water in the fountain. Shung will cook all the things that you want in 
the sick-room, or go on messages. Oh, we have thought of everything.” 

Mrs. Challoner might exclaim against Doris taking her place so val- 
iantly in the performance of unaccustomed responsibilities, yet it was an 
immense comfort in the face of a perhaps dangerous and tedious illness 
to have one at her right hand so able, willing, and resolute. Euphemia 
was willing and docile, but she lacked initiative. This Doris would sup- 


THE SILENT SEA 


223 


ply, and the two, working harmoniously together, with Shung as ally 
and coadjutor, would form a strong stay. Only, as so often happens in 
drawing up domestic as well as political programmes, there was one ele- 
ment left out of the reckoning, which, on this first night, made itself 
strongly felt — the unforeseen. So far from going to sleep “ quite early,” 
it was nearly twelve o’clock before Doris closed her eyes that night. 

It was a little after eight when Shung-Loo, who had gone to the doc- 
tor for medicine, returned with it in some excitement. The Colmar 
Arms was on fire, and nothing could be done to stop it. It was in one 
great blaze ; they could see it from the top of the reef. Shung had 
heard that some one was burned in one of the rooms, but there was so 
much hurry and confusion he did not know who it was, or whether it 
were true. 

Oh, I hope Mr. Fitz-Gibbon was not hurt there !” cried Euphemia. 
Doris turned very pale. 

“ I think he was going to play at the miners’ concert this evening. 
But, of course, they would all turn out to try and stop the fire,” she said, 
after a little pause. 

They went with Shung up to the top of the reef. It was a sultry, 
still night. The flames, which had now completely enveloped the house, 
cast a brilliant illumination around, and figures could be seen hurrying 
about, evidently concentrating all their attention on saving the places 
near the inn. Fortunately, it stood a little apart from the other dwell- 
ings, and there was no sign that any of them had so far caught fire. As 
the maid was out this evening, at a sister’s on the mine, who was mar- 
ried to one of the miners, Doris and Euphemia did not stay long look- 
ing at the sight. Mrs. Challoner met them as they came in, and was 
alarmed at the pallor of Doris’s face. 

‘‘ The shock has been too much for yon, Doris,” she said, when Eu- 
phemia had breathlessly related the catastrophe at which they had been 
looking. “ I must order my little housekeeper to bed in good time,” 
added Mrs. Challoner, as she kissed both girls before returning to the 
sick-room for the night. Shortly afterwards Euphemia went to her own 
room, saying it seemed as if it were two days ago since they got up at 
daylight to go to Broombush Creek. She could hardly keep her eyes 
open. Doris stood looking after her with a feeling of blank amazement. 
It was Euphemia who had suggested that perhaps Mr. Fitz-Gibbon had 
been hurt, yet now she seemed to think no more about the matter, while 
she herself felt almost stunned with terror. The thought had fastened 
on her mind that Victor might have tried to save some one from the fire 
— that when it broke out he might have been in the house. A hundred 
conjectures kept passing through her mind, each more disquieting than 
the other, till her agitation grew so that she could hardly stand. She 


224 


THE SILENT SEA 


went to the southern veranda, from which she could see the red, angry 
glare in the sky. Looking at this, her fears became insupportable. She 
went round to the back, to the little lean-to room that Shung-Loo occu- 
pied, to send him down to the township. He w’ould find out if any one 
had been hurt — if Mr. Fitz-Gibbon was safe. But as she reached the 
door the light that shone through the window was put out, which meant 
that Shung-Loo had gone to bed. As she stood debating with herself 
whether she should call him, she heard some one hurrying to the house. 
It was Bridget. 

“ Oh, Miss Doris, did ye hear about the fire, and Mr. Fitz-Gibbon and 
the landlord being burned to death ?” she cried, flourishing the rumors 
she had heard in their most gruesomely dramatic form. 

She went on with great excitement, retailing all that she had heard, 
and various surmises on her own account, bewailing the mishap with 
facile sympathy, and that glow of half-gratified importance with which 
some people recount a tale of horror. 

But Doris heard nothing beyond the first awful intelligence. She 
stood in the wan starlight as if turned to stone. 

‘‘ It was just a mercy av the Lard that me brother-in-law wasn’t there 
when the fire bruk out, for he’s just the very wahn to get into throuble 
on the first opportunity. Well, it’s after noine. Miss Doris ; I musht be 
turning in, so as to be up broight and early, for there’s always shlops to 
be made ahl the toime whin there’s illness in the house — and I’d like to 
see the funerals if I can be shpared. We seem to be getting a dale av 
throuble all to once. Good-night, Miss Doris ; ye’re enjoying the coolth 
av the air. If ye cast your oi round as you go in, ye’ll see the sign av 
the shmoking ruin in the sky.” 

And so, in entire unconsciousness of the crushing blow she had dealt 
the girl, who stood in speechless horror leaning heavily against a lounge 
beside her, the good Bridget bustled into the kitchen. In imagination, 
she was already putting a bit of crape on her Sunday hat, as a sign of 
her sympathy and sorrow for the father of a family, and perhaps that 
handsome young gentleman, so pleasant-spoken, and generous in the 
matter of frequent tips. She was not quite sure he was a corpse yet, 
but, at any rate, he was badly burned, and would most likely not get 
over the accident. 

Groping her way into the house, Doris somehow reached the sitting- 
room. The door and windows were open, and the shaded candles were 
throwing a flood of soft light into the dusky stillness of the night. She 
tottered towards the couch under one of the windows, but, before she 
reached it, it seemed to swim out of sight — a great blank and silence fell 
upon her. 

After what seemed long hours, but was in reality only a few minutes. 


THE SILENT SEA 


225 


she found herself on the ground, her hands outspread on the couch, and 
her head resting on them. She tried to remember how she had come 
there, and looked round the room with startled eyes. Nothing was 
changed. There was the little flannel nightgown she had been sewing 
for one of the Connell children on the wicker gypsy table ; above her 
hung the picture of the beautiful old English home in which her mother 
was born ; her mother’s water-colors of Ouranie were where she had ar- 
ranged them on the opposite wall ; near her, on the low bookcases, were 
the radiant flowers, but at the sight of these a terrible sorrow seized her. 
Moaning like a creature stabbed to the heart, she covered her face with 
her hands and began to tremble like an aspen-leaf in the wind. “Burned 
to death ! burned to death !” The words turned into scarlet letters around 
her. But as the horror and tearless anguish were again half lost in a 
creeping stupor, the sound of approaching footsteps reached her. There 
was a gentle knock at the open door. 

“ Is there any one here ?” said a well-known voice ; and then there was 
a quick exclamation — a low cry of alarm. 

For a moment Doris hardly dared to believe her ears, hardly dared to 
look, fearing she was betrayed by one of those happy dreams that flee 
when one is fully awake. But this vision was too eager, too much alive, 
and too robust, to be lightly spirited away. 

It was Victor — not indeed scathless, for one arm was in a sling, and 
one side of his face was darkly flushed, where it had been winnowed by 
the fiery breath of flame. 

He stood for a moment transfixed with that low cry on his lips, and 
the look of sudden alarm that had come into his eyes on first catching 
sight of Doris lying with her head against the couch, her face rigid and 
white as if in a swoon. The next moment he was by her side, helping 
her to rise. 

“You have hurt yourself ? you are ill, Doris ?” he cried, looking at her, 
as she leaned back on the couch, her face still deadly pale, and a strange, 
strained look in her eyes. “ Perhaps it is you who are ill, not Mr. Chal- 
loner, as I heard in the office to-day. But where are the rest ? Why are 
you all alone, looking so dreadfully pale ?” he said, looking around, for it 
was not yet ten. And as his first affright passed away the wonder of it 
all grew upon him. 

“ No, I am not ill ; I am better,” answered Doris in a low, feeble 
voice. 

It was all too sudden ; the revulsion from the horror and anguish 
which had overwhelmed her was too great at first to permit her to feel 
or think. For a few moments she was only conscious that the terrible 
misery was unreal. Here was Victor, but with no vital hurt. The vio- 
lence of the reaction shook her almost as much as the brutal tidings. 

15 


226 


THE SILENT SEA 


But gradually a great and solemn gladness put new life into her failing 
pulses. 

“ You have come !” she said, looking up at him with the dawn of a 
smile as he stood before her, his face full of wondering anxiety. 

The fact was so obvious that one might deem the words little to the 
purpose. But they were spoken with a thrill of gladness that woke a 
strange happiness in Victor’s heart. 

“ You were not very badly hurt, after all ?” she said, looking from his 
flushed cheek to his bandaged arm. 

“ Oh, very little — it is nothing ! But, Doris, does Mrs. Challoner know 
that you have been so ill ? You are trembling even now, and your hands 
are quite cold,” he added, touching them as they lay folded over the end 
of the couch. 

“No, no one knows . . . and I am nearly quite well.” 

“ Had you fainted ? Did anything alarm you ?” 

He was looking at her intently, and saw that at the question a faint 
wave of color slowly overspread her face. Her eyes deepened with un- 
shed tears, which gave a blurred, misty outline to all around her. She 
felt as if a great gulf of unknown emotion threatened to overpower her. 
She shrunk, she knew not why, from recalling the words that had over- 
powered her with such horror. 

“ I will tell Mrs. Challoner you are here. I know she would like to 
see you,” she said, rising. 

But her gait was a little unsteady. She leaned on Victor’s offered arm 
till she reached the door of the sick-room. 

“ Please don’t frighten her about me. You see I am well now,” she 
said in an almost inaudible whisper as he turned back. 

Two minutes later she re-entered the sitting-room with Mrs. Chal- 
loner. 

“ Oh, you were at the Are ! — you have been hurt !” cried the latter, as 
soon as she caught sight of him. 

And then the story of the fire was gone over as far as Victor knew it. 
He had gone with ’Zilla Jenkins to the Saturday concert. 

“ I got Eoby to let me play my tune the first thing, as I wanted to 
come up at once to see if there was anything I could do for you here. 
I heard through the doctor that Mr. Challoner was down with the fever. 
Before I finished there was a great cry of fire, and we all rushed out pell- 
mell. It must have been going on for some time before it was noticed. 
West, it seems, had been drinking rather heavily ; he was in bed most of 
the day, and his wife was in the bar — ” 

“ Oh, poor thing ! Was she hurt at all? Was any one injured besides 
you?” asked Mrs. Challoner anxiously. 

“Yes, the landlord. It must have been in his room the fire began. 


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He was behind the bar in the wooden part of the house, which was as 
dry as chips. They noticed a strong smell of burning, but they thought 
it came from some rubbish-heaps the ’ostler set on fire towards sunset in 
the back-yard. When the flames broke out beyond the room where the 
fire began, they could do nothing but run out for their lives — ” 

“ Then didn’t West give the alarm ?” 

“ He never came out at all,” answered Victor, in lowered tones, glanc- 
ing anxiously towards Doris. 

“ He was burned to death ?” said Mrs. Challoner, in horror-stricken 
tones. 

“ Yes ; and the people who were in the bar had only just time to clear 
out. Some door or partition gave way, and the flames swept over it like 
an avalanche. The bar and all the back part of the house was one mass 
of flames when we reached the place from the school-room. Mrs. West 
was struggling to get away from some people to rush into the house for 
her little boy. They thought he was in the same room with his father. 
But, fortunately, I happened to know that he was in an end-room of the 
stone part of the house. Dick and I were rather chummy, poor little 
chap ! The house was all at sixes and sevens for a day or two back — 
the cook gone, a dazed house-maid in the kitchen, and Mrs. West having 
to see to the bar. This evening, while I was having tea about seven, 
Dick came in in his night-dress from a little room that opened out of the 
dining-room. He had been put to bed early, so as to be out of the way, 
but he said he wasn’t ‘ s’eepy,’ and so he had some tea with me, and then 
went back to bed. I got in through the dining-room window all right, 
but by the time I got back with Dick a spark through the open window 
had set the curtains on fire. I had to tear them down before I could get 
out with him — ” 

“ Oh, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, you saved the poor child at the risk of your 
own life !” said Mrs. Challoner, looking at the young man with beaming 
eyes. 

“There was not much risk, really,” answered Victor. “The great 
thing was that I knew where the poor little beggar slept. The smoke 
was getting rather bad in his room, but the dining-room was very little 
on fire when I went in.” 

“ But your cheek is a little hurt, and your arm perhaps very much,” 
said Doris, speaking for the first time, with an adorable little quiver in 
her voice and a dove-like, melting softness in her eyes. 

“ Well, and that was through stupidity,” said Victor, who could hardly 
help laughing aloud for sheer light-heartedness. He would, in truth, have 
endured twenty times as much pain for the sake of hearing that faltering 
intonation. “ As I pulled the curtains down, I let the burning edge of 
one brush my face and coat-sleeve. It must have been on fire for some 


228 


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little time before any one noticed it, and then, when I pulled it off, my 
shirt-sleeve flared up. But Dr. Magann dressed the burn for me after I 
had taken Dick to the Olsens’ place. That is where he and his mother 
have found shelter. Mrs. Olsen is Mrs. West’s sister. . . . And I have 
had the offer of being boarded by the amiable Scroogs,” said Victor, 
with a smile. 

Scroogs was a man who kept a large, rough boarding-house at Colmar. 
He had been twice flned within the last two months for sly grog-selling 
and for riotous goings-on at his establishment. 

“ But you must not go there ; the place is not fit for you. We can 
very well manage to board you here,” said Mrs. Challoner. 

It goes without saying that this arrangement had great charms for 
Victor, only he was loath to add to the cares of the household at this 
juncture. Finally, they compromised the matter by arranging that he 
should breakfast and dine in the evening at Stonehouse. He could easily 
manage about lunch in his office on week-days. 

“ But you must be careful — you should not irritate your arm. I must 
have a look at the burn to-morrow,” said Mrs. Challoner, with motherly 
solicitude. 

“ Oh, it is nothing ; it will be all right in a day or two. Fortunately, 
it’s my left arm,” answered Victor. 

But though he made light of the part he had played in the catas- 
trophe, no one else at Colmar — with perhaps one exception — was dis- 
posed to follow suit. The risk he had run and the hurt he had received 
were both much exaggerated. Bridget was not the only one who con- 
signed him to an untimely grave. It was found to be a kind of artistic 
emotion to say that he had been burned alive. The next day being Sun- 
day, there was leisure to dwell on all the harrowing details, and there 
was a constant stream of inquirers at Stonehouse as to Victor’s condition. 
The first to arrive was Mick, who would not be satisfied with Bridget’s 
assurance that the “ young gintleman was just like a May daisy, and ’at- 
ing a hearty breakfast — glory be to God !” She had offered Victor her 
own congratulations on his safety with the eloquence of her race, main- 
taining a discreet silence as to her too ready belief in his mortality. 

“ If I might make so bould, I would like to shake hahnds wid you, 
Mr. Fitz-Gibbon,” said Mick, when Victor came out to see him at the 
back-door. 

Why, Mick, one would think I had been singed all over like a 
plucked hen, to hear you speak so solemnly !” said Victor, laughing as 
he shook the little man’s hand. 

“ Indade, sor, some av thim made me belave that a singed fowl was a 
fool to the shtate ye wor in. I was sound ashlape through it all in my 
little tint, and whin I got up and wint out, the first mahn I met was Ben 


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229 


Combrie, and the flare av the Colmar Arms in the sky like the day av 
judgmint. And two min roasted in the flames, says he — the landlord 
and the purser.” 

But surely you know Ben Combrie’s gift for saying the thing that 
is not, Mick 

“ I do, sor — none betther — but ye cahnt thrust him even at the loy- 
ing, for he sometimes tells the trut and shlips you up whin you laste 
ixpict it — and the half was thrue. Poor Wisht, his wife will mourn, 
though maybe widout reason, and we all sorrow for the good grog — 
’twas a sinful washte ! And here’s a tiligraph for ye, sor ; I met the 
boy coming up, and I thought I might as well save him. It came lasht 
night in the middle of the combushtion. He mintioned loikewise, sor, 
that the choild ye saved out av the flames was running about as hearty 
as a young wallaby this marning, though the poor mother is lying 
spacheless crying on the poor omadhan that shpilte himsilf and the 
good grog intoirely. ’Tis loikely the funeral will be early to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

“ I WONDER if this is something further about the cave room,” thought 
Victor, turning the telegram over, as he went into his own room with 
it. By Saturday’s mail a letter had reached him from his uncle, telling 
him that instructions had been sent to Trevaskis to have the late mana- 
ger’s effects removed, and afford the purser full scope to investigate the 
cave room on behalf of the company. The delay in answering Victor’s 
letter had been caused by Mr. Drummond’s absence in Tasmania. Within 
half an hour of the receipt of this, Trevaskis had come into the office 
with an open letter in his hand. 

I suppose you have had instructions about this ?” he said, in a tone 
pitched at a deliberate calmness, yet with a curious vibration underlying 
it of strong emotion. Victor, in reply, read the portion of his uncle’s 
letter which dealt with the matter. 

I can’t possibly have the things removed for a day or two,” said 
Trevaskis in accents which suddenly jumped by a note above the level 
of his usual voice. There was an odd, smothered fierceness in his man- 
ner that made Victor suddenly look at him with inquiring wonder. It 
seemed as if the man had aged by years in the past few weeks. Per- 
haps, considering all the circumstances, the change was not surprising. 
For nine consecutive nights he had worked in the cave room, his eyes 
gradually getting worse. At the end of that time he was unable to 


230 


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stoop, or read, or walk in the sunshine, without torturing throbs of pain 
in his eyeballs. The doctor, whom he at last unwillingly consulted, 
strongly urged him to go away from the mine for a change. “ Why, 
man, you’ll blind yourself,” he said two days later, exasperated into ' 
brutal frankness by the patient’s obvious disregard of his instructions. 
At the words, a sudden cold dread shot through the manager’s mind. 
For the next eight days and nights he rested almost absolutely. Once 
in the twenty-four hours he went below, and took a turn all round the 
mine. For the rest of the day he sat in his room with the blinds down. 
When solitude and enforced idleness became unbearable, he would go 
into the cave room and gloat over his bars of shining gold — each one 
worth close on nine hundred pounds. 

Then he would pace about in the obscurity of the place, pausing at 
the spots where the great bottles of amalgam that were still untouched 
lay hidden. 

“ Oh, if Dan would only come ! if Dan would only come !” he would 
sometimes say at such times half aloud. 

He was not one who indulged much in the habit of addressing re- 
marks to himself audibly ; but the constant strain of anxiety, of harass- 
ing uncertainty as to whether he could, after all, secure this treasure, 
culminated at times in fits of such intense restlessness, that to walk about 
speaking to himself, in the solitude and obscurity of the cave room, af- 
forded him a certain relief. 

But Dan’s coming was indefinitely delayed. He wrote to say that he 
had been stupid enough “ to get upon the spree,” and that when he was 
getting over this he had a feverish attack. He was now in the hospital, 
and the doctors wouldn’t tell him when he could get out, but he hoped 
he would soon be well enough to travel. 

This might mean the delay of a few days or weeks. It might mean 
that Dan would not come till it was too late ; for in a couple of weeks, 
at the most, Kaphael Dunning would arrive to take possession of his 
brother’s belongings, and once that was done, the last vestige of excuse 
for delaying the search of the cave room would be gone. 

Trevaskis did not fail to grasp the weak points of his situation ; but 
these, somehow, only inspired him with a sort of desperate, despairing 
resolution to use every possible and impossible means to secure the gold. 
If the worst came to the worst, he would secrete the bars, at least, in 
his own room. Could there be anything among Dunning’s many pa- 
pers that could give a clue to the treasure ? 

At the thought Trevaskis instituted a rigorous search of all the letters, 
documents, and boxes which would be handed over to the late manager’s 
brother. In one of the latter he discovered two duplicate keys of the 
strong safe for the gold. He regarded them curiously for some mo- 


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231 


ments, wondering to which of his predecessors belonged the credit of 
having them manufactured, Webster most likely, so as to enable him 
to steal some of the amalgam, when kept for a night in the safe before 
it was retorted. 

This discovery, curiously enough, lessened the accidental scruples which 
still visited Trevaskis from time to time, especially when his conscience 
was illuminated by the fear of detection. He thought, with something 
akin to indignation, of the innumerable “ dodges ” by which the majority 
of mining managers contrived to rob the people by whom they were 
employed. 

I wouldn’t, and I couldn’t, so help me Qod ! steal an ounce of gold 
or amalgam from the mine on my own account,” he thought ; “ but to 
keep a treasure that you have discovered — ah ! that is quite another mat- 
ter. No one else has a better right to the gold than the one who finds it.” 

After all, the fact that a man’s forefathers have fastened a lantern to 
a cow’s head on a dark night by the sea-shore, so as to lead a casual 
trading-smack to founder on the rocks for the sake of its cargo, must 
impart certain distinguishing nuances to his conscience. 

At any rate, after discovering these keys, Trevaskis was more than 
ever upheld by the consciousness that his moral rectitude would never 
allow him to stoop to the base pilfering which had been so largely prac- 
tised by other managers of the Colmar Mine. Yet, side by side with 
this, his determination grew stronger not to let any untoward circum- 
stances cheat him out of the enjoyment of the fortune he had discovered 
in the cave room. 

When his eyes became strong enough to bear the sunlight, his first 
care was to ride across to the weather-board hut erected on the quartz 
claim which he had secured in the vicinity of the broken-down whim. 
It reassured him to prowl about this hut and reflect on the treasure that 
might soon be hidden there. 

As he was riding back he finally determined that, as soon as ever Dan 
came, the best thing would be to take him fully into his confidence, and 
secure his help in hiding the gold and amalgam in the hut, away from 
the mine altogether. 

“ I’ll send a message to Dan on Monday or Tuesday, begging him to 
come on, even if he’s half dead. If he became much worse at the little 
hut it would be a fine opportunity for me to resign suddenly. I’d just 
say that the company had better send another manager as soon as pos- 
sible. ‘ My only brother has been taken very ill all by himself ; I must 
give him my whole time. In any case I intended to resign soon, as I 
find my health will not stand the climate here.’ ” 

He wrote these lines and several more, finding a certain relief in pict- 
uring this conclusion of his suspense. 


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It is now some time,’’ he reflected, “ since Fitz-Gibbon and I bad 
that barney. He has never said a word about the search since ; I don’t 
believe he even thinks of it. Ah, there’s nothing like a good bluff 
sometimes !” 

Such were the half-complacent reflections that passed through Trevas- 
kis’s mind on Thursday evening, after he returned from visiting his 
quartz claim. On Friday night he felt well enough to resume opera- 
tions in the cave room. But by Saturday morning’s mail came an ofii- 
cial letter, written by the mine secretary at the dictation of the chair- 
man of directors, instructing the manager to permit the purser to remove 
the late Mr. Dunning’s effects from the cave room, and institute a care- 
ful search of the place. For a short time after reading this letter Tre- 
vaskis sat perfectly motionless, staring hard before him. The meshes 
were closing round him ; he was snared, and not only so, but he had 
been perfectly hoodwinked by this double-faced young Irishman. 

The thought galled him almost as much as the prospect of losing the 
gold. 

“ But I won’t lose it ! I won’t ! I won’t !” he muttered to himself, 
clenching his hands and teeth. 

He had need of all his decision and energy to quell the rising passion 
that threatened to overmaster him. 

When Victor, struck by the curious intonation of his voice, looked at 
Trevaskis, he saw that his face looked gray and lined. His eyes were 
uncovered. The space between them, as has been said, was unusually 
narrow ; but now the pupils had lengthened in a curious way, so that 
they almost seemed to meet in a sinister, glittering line, like the eyes 
of a cat in the dark. 

The expression of his whole face gave Victor a certain shock. He 
concluded that Trevaskis was furious at having his objections set aside. 
Or was there, after all, some truth in Vansittart’s conviction ? The last 
surmise led Victor to answer with a certain reserve that, as soon as Dun- 
ning’s things were cleared out, he was ready to begin his search. 

On that, Trevaskis strode away without making any reply. For the 
rest of the day he purposely kept out of Victor’s way. 

“ If this telegram is to hasten operations,” thought Victor, as he 
opened the envelope, “ the old fellow will certainly have a fit.” 

But the first glance showed him that the message touched him much 
more nearly than any event connected with the Colmar Mine. It was 
from Miss Paget, dated Saturday morning, from Albany, and ran : 

“ Left Colombo sooner than anticipated. Not going to Perth. Caught in a tor- 
nado three days ago ; vessel almost foundered. Stay here till Tuesday to recoup. 
Expect to reach Adelaide on Friday next.” 

When the doctor, after paying his morning visit to Challoner, inter- 


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233 


viewed his second patient at Stonehouse and dressed his arm, he de- 
clared the young man had developed febrile symptoms. 

“ Why, both your cheeks look as if they were scorched, and your 
pulse is going nineteen to the dozen. You’ll have to be careful, young 
man ; that’s a nastier burn than you think for. You’d better lay up 
for a day or two,” he said solemnly. 

But Victor, who was in his own confidence more than the man of 
healing, did not propose to take this advice seriously. He knew it was 
the prospect of his interview with Helen, which was now so near — the 
thought of the moment when he should be free to put his fortune to the 
touch, and win or lose it all — that made his pulses bound and his tem- 
ples throb. What would Doris say when he first uttered the words that 
had been the refrain of his thoughts and the burden of his dreams so 
long? Not so very long, perhaps, counting by the mere duration of 
time. But in periods of vivid emotion, when the hours he doles out 
are counted by heart-beats, and not by the clock. Time is found to be 
an old bankrupt, who has not the wherewithal to pay his debts. 

“ Doris, I love you ! I love you !” 

He was dramatizing the scene to himself, as is the manner of young 
lovers, sitting in the western veranda late in the afternoon, staring hard 
at an open book which he held right side up, just as if he were reading 
it page by page. Would the words startle her too much ? Would the 
moist, radiant eyes look at him in troubled wonder ? He had sometimes 
feared that she would hardly understand — that the guarded seclusion of 
her life and the dewy simplicity of her youth would make his words 
of love a strange tale which as yet could find no response in her heart. 
And now he began to recall all that had fed his timid hopes, and the 
unreasoning happiness that of late had taken possession of him, and 
then began to fear lest he had built too much on her candid friendli- 
ness, her unembarrassed pleasure at the prospect of his travelling with 
them. And yet, was there not a great thrill of gladness in her voice as 
she said, “You have come”? 

He was in the very heart of these reflections, when she came out with 
the hushed footfalls that so soon become habitual when there is illness 
in a household. 

“ I want you, please, to let down the curtains. I have made Mrs. Chal- 
loner lie down in my room, and I want to make it quiet and shady, so that 
she may have a good sleep while Euphemia takes care of her father,” she 
said, with the gravity befitting one who has to look after many people. 

Victor obeyed, and then drew forward a rocking-chair for her, saying, 

“You have been going about working all day, I believe. Now, don’t 
you think it is time you rested ?” 

“ I have not done nearly as much as I thought I should — ” 


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“ Oh, you ambitious child ! DiduH you give Shuug directions three 
hundred and twenty times, and beat up eggs, and put fresh water in all 
the flower-vases, and scold Bridget 

“ But you and Phemy helped me with the flowers. As for scolding 
Bridget, I only just remonstrated with her for carrying such dreadful 
tales as — ” 

She suddenly stopped short, and Victor, who had merely invented the 
accusation at random, said gravely, 

“ I suppose you gave it to her well till she cried, and promised she 
would do so no more?” 

But Doris had assumed a little air of reserve, which piqued Victor into 
saying, 

“ Was the tale too dreadful for me to hear?” 

“ It was last night, you see,” answered Doris, after a little pause. 

“ Last night when you were alone?” 

‘‘ Yes.” 

“ She came and frightened you with some ghost story ?” 

Oh, it was much worse than any ghost story !” 

“ May I try and guess what it was ?” 

She gave a shy little nod by way of answer, and then said, with a half- 
mysterious smile, 

“ But I don’t believe you can guess in the least.” 

Well, I think it will be only fair for you to help me, as we used to 
do when we played at hiding things indoors on a rainy day.” 

“ How was that ? I don’t know any gregarious games at all.” 

The whimsically old and sedate words that Doris sometimes used 
amused Victor intensely, but he kept his countenance as he explained, 

“ The other youngster goes out, and you hide a penknife, or a big 
glass marble, or anything, in some secret place ; then, when he tries to 
find the article, if he goes near it you say ‘ Hot,’ if he goes away from 
it you say ‘ Cold.’ ” 

‘‘ Oh, very well.” 

Bridget came and told you that she put salt-bush in the custard ?” 

Cold.” 

“That she broke a Sevres bowl and buried the remains without an 
inquest?” 

“ Cold.” 

“ That she wrote a spelling-book and dedicated it to the universe ?” 

Doris laughed outright. 

“ You are in the Polar regions,” she said, gently swaying the rocking- 
chair backward and forward, in comfortable security that Bridget’s delise 
and her own foolish credulity were too much beyond the ken of a third 
person’s unassisted speculations. 


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235 


Victor looked profoundly dejected for a moment, but so far he had 
not an inkling that an incredibly happy revelation awaited him. 

“ She went to the township and said she met a dragon 

“Hot and cold.” 

“ Ah ! I won’t come away from the township. It was last night when 
the fire broke out 

“ Hot,” said Doris, in a tone of losing confidence. 

“ She came and told you some dreadful tale about the fire ?” 

Doris, who had so little practised the art of concealment that even 
the evasion of a question half offended her instinct of absolute sincerity, 
began to see that no alternative remained but to confess the whole story. 

“ I will tell you how it was,” she said slowly. “ When Shung told 
us about the fire last night he said some people had been hurt — he did 
not know who. Euphemia said she hoped you were not, and that made 
me feel so dreadfully afraid — ” 

“ That I was hurt ?” said Victor, a quick fiush rising on his face as he 
leaned over towards Doris, drinking in every word she said. 

“Yes. I went round to send Shung down to see if you were safe, 
but he had just put out his light. Then Bridget came, and — you mustn’t 
think I was very foolish for quite believing it — even now it seems terri- 
ble to say it — ” 

She gave a long, low sigh. 

“Was it about me?” asked Victor, in a breathless sort of voice. 

“ Yes ; she said you were burned to death.” 

He could not for a moment utter a word in reply. Doris, glancing up 
at him, thought he looked strangely glad, and some undefined feeling 
made her heart begin to beat more rapidly. 

“ And was that what made you feel so ill, Doris ?” asked the young 
man, in a low, shaken voice. 

“Yes. I quite believed it till I heard you speaking, and — oh, I felt 
as if I would die.” 

“ Oh, Doris, my darling ! you do care for me, then ? I love you — I 
love you with all my heart and soul ! but I have been afraid^ — ” 

She shrank back a little as he bent closer to her, and the look in her 
face was partly what he had conjured up half an hour before. Only with 
the wonder and timidity there was something of dawning comprehen- 
sion, even of gladness ; but she did not speak, and after a little time he 
spoke again. 

“You are not angry with me, are you, Doris?” 

“ No — oh, no !” she answered softly. 

“And do you think you love me a little?” 

There was a long pause, and then, whether she knew all that it con- 
veyed or not, she answered in a perfectly audible voice. 


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“ Yes, I am sure of it.” 

“ And do you know how much I love you ?” he asked after a little, 
trying hard to keep down the rising torrent of his joy. 

A vivid color had risen in her cheeks, but Victor was quite pale, and 
his hand, as he placed it on the arm of the chair on which she sat, shook 
a little. Seeing him so pallid and agitated, a troubled look came into 
her face. 

“You are not unhappy, are you?” she asked very gently. 

“ No ; there is only one thing that could make me unhappy just now, 
Doris.” 

“ What is that?” 

“ The thought that you could not love me as long as we both live.” 

“ Yes, and when we both die,” she answered very gravely. 

And then he was more than content. Only one more petition would 
he make just then. 

“ Doris, let me hold your hand a little moment.” 

A smile parted her lips as she gave him her hand. It trembled like 
a little reed-warbler whose wings are suddenly pinioned, as his lithe brown 
fingers closed over hers. Very gently, fearing to frighten her, yet un- 
able to resist the impulse, he bent his head and imprinted one tremulous 
kiss on the palm of the imprisoned hand ; and then he released it, hardly 
daring to glance at her, for fear he might see a look of trouble or dis- 
pleasure in her face. But it was happy and serene, and he took heart 
of grace. 

“ One day this little hand will be given to me, Doris, and I shall place 
a plain gold ring on the third finger.” 

“ Do you mean that we will be married ?” she said hesitatingly. 

“Yes, that is just what I do mean,” answered Victor, with a low, glad 
laugh. 

“ But mustn’t we be a good deal older and wiser first ?” 

“ Oh, no ! We’re wise enough at this moment, Doris, and we’ll be 
quite old enough in another year — perhaps in six months — as soon as I 
can see your guardian in London.” 

“ Why will you have to see him ?” 

“ Ob, to assure him that I have some money and come of decent peo- 
ple — that I am the very one to make you happy as long as you live.” 

“ He’ll know that as soon as he sees you,” said Doris, with a slow, 
thoughtful utterance. 

“ Oh, you darling !” murmured the young lover passionately. 

And then he rose and paced up and down the veranda. The tempta- 
tion to kneel down and enfold her in his arms rose too distractingly. 

“Come into the avenue for a little walk, Doris,” he said, after a mo- 
♦ ment or two. 


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237 


They walked side by side, for the most part in silence. When Victor 
spoke, it was of indifferent subjects, for he saw that gradually Doris 
had become a little more agitated. When she turned to re-enter the 
house he said, 

‘‘ Doris, before we part, tell me once more — do you love me ?” 

She looked up at him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes full of a soft, 
deep light, some luminous touch of emotion in every line of her face — 
all her young, pure beauty made more beautiful by the great enchanter. 

‘‘ I am quite sure of it,” she said slowly. 

A kind of hushed awe had fallen upon her. What was this new, divine 
influence that wrapped her round, making the thought of sorrow, faint 
and far away, enclosing her as if in a new world? She had no word or 
phrase for it all. She could only feel it thrilling every flbre of her being 
— feel it keenly, physically, as one feels the touch of a hand, or hears 
the melody of a bird’s song, or inhales the breath of the early violets; 
but more mysterious than any of these ecstasies of feeling, seeing that 
this new faculty of her nature embraced them all, and yet was centred 
in another. The consciousness of being so happy apart from all the 
influences of her past life, apart even from thoughts of her mother, 
struck her with a kind of amazement. She was glad to be in the silence 
and solitude of her own room that night to ponder over the strange 
wonder and beauty of it all. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

As for Victor, he was lost in that tide of unreasoning, tumultuous 
bliss which comes to a man but once in his lifetime, and in his youth 
or not at all. He reflected when it was too late that his purpose had 
been to speak no word of love to Doris till after he had seen Miss Paget ; 
but it was all too inevitable, and now he was too restlessly happy to sleep. 
The night was very still, but cool and full of starlight. He went out- 
side and walked to the top of the reef. The throbbing of the air-com- 
pressors and the din of the engine travelled far into the night. By that 
sound he knew it must be after twelve, for on Sunday work was not 
resumed till midnight. As he stood looking into the vast spaces of the 
plains all round, vague and gray and level, without form or motion, he 
was thrilled with wonder as he thought of the sequence of events which 
had brought Doris into the heart of so desolate and melancholy a region 
— thrilled with the thought that here, where nature was at its sternest 
and man’s existence in its barest form, they two should find each other 


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and the great happiness of their lives. While lost in these reflections, 
a man came hurrying up the reef from the mine, and paused within a 
few paces of Victor, saying, 

“ Is that you, cap’en 

“ No, ’Zilla, it isn’t the captain,” answered Victor, who recognized the 
voice. 

Something had gone wrong, and the engineer wanted to consult the 
manager. 

“ I bait and bait at ’is door, but ’e ain’t in, and I thoft ’e must a-come 
to ask for Mr. Challoner.” 

On hearing the captain was not at Stonehouse, ’Zilla stood for a mo- 
ment in deep thought. 

‘‘ Perhaps he’s in by this time. He may have gone for a stroll some- 
where,” suggested Victor. 

But ’Zilla didn’t fall in with this view. It was now nearly half an 
hour since he had first gone to the captain’s rooms, just ten minutes 
after he had been at the shaft’s mouth seeing the men go below. ’Zilla 
had waited and gone again, but the rooms were in darkness, and still no 
sign of Trevaskis. Victor suggested that he might be asleep. 

’E may be took in a fit, but ’e couldn’t be asleep and not ’ear the 
knocks I give. I wish you’d come down, sir, and go to ’is rooms by the 
inside way, and make sure. The cap’en looks very bad to me lately, 
and very bad-tempered ; like a hedgaboor at the least word, and when a 
man don’t mean nothin’ in the world.” 

They were descending the reef by this time. Victor went into his 
office as suggested, and through the four rooms intervening, followed by 
’Zilla. He knocked at the door and called out “ Captain !” repeatedly 
in a lusty voice. But there was no response. As they were leaving the 
purser’s office the engineer came up. The driving-wheel of the pan-shaft 
had got out of gear, and he was anxious to hang up the battery and stop 
the machinery. 

“ But if I do it off my own hook he’ll most likely make a devil of a 
row,” he said ; “ more especially as the fortnightly cleaning-up is so near.” 

“ He can’t be in,” said Victor ; ‘‘ it’s impossible.” 

They walked back to the pan-room and waited another half-hour. 
The driving-wheel had worked loose and could not be righted without a 
stoppage. 

“ But if I stop without his orders he’ll damn my eyes till he’s black 
in the face, and want to know who’s master here,” said the engineer, a 
quiet, steady-going Scotchman, who found the Trevaskis regime rather 
an exasperating one. “ I’ll tell you what, Mr. Purser,” he said, when 
the half-hour was up, “you come with me to the manager’s office, and 
if I can’t make him hear I’ll break a pane, open the window, and go in 


THE SILENT SEA 


239 


to make sure. If he isn’t on the premises I’ll stop the machinery on my 
own responsibility. If he goes gallivanting about at night, God knows 
where, it’s his lookout.” 

Victor agreed to this arrangement, and the three once more walked 
up to the manager’s oflSce. 

They knocked and shouted with the same result as before. Then the 
engineer got a stone, and, making a clean break in one of the lower 
panes, opened the window of the manager’s office and got in. He struck 
a light and passed into the bedroom. It was empty, and the bed had 
not been slept in. As he was getting out, the door of the office that led 
into the iron passage was unlocked, and Trevaskis entered, a bull’s-eye 
lantern in one hand, a parcel in the other. He gave a savage yell when 
he caught sight of a man disappearing through the window. Either by 
accident or design, the lantern fell from him with a crash and the candle 
was extinguished. 

He rushed to the window, and, seeing three men dimly in the dark- 
ness, broke into an excited volley of abuse, in a thick, strange voice. 
The engineer attempted to speak, but could not at first make himself 
heard. They were thieves — they were consigned to eternal and active 
perdition ; but first they would be hauled to jail. 

If you’ve quite finished, sir, perhaps you’ll allow me to tell you that 
I’m the engineer.” He drew nearer to the open window as he spoke, 
and Trevaskis gave a muffied exclamation. “ Please take notice,” the 
engineer went on, in tones quivering with anger, “ that it was on the 
business of the company I forced my way into the manager’s rooms, as 
Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, the purser, will bear witness.” 

The mention of this name had a singular effect on Trevaskis. He 
remained quite silent for a moment, attempting neither to light candle 
or lamp nor to make any reply. The engineer had again to ask for in- 
structions before Trevaskis spoke. Then, seeing Victor turning to leave, 
he called out to him to wait a moment. 

“ I’ll be down after you in five minutes,” he said, and on this Bruce 
and ’Zilla returned to the engine-room. Trevaskis went into his bed- 
room and came out in a few minutes, locking the doors after him. 

“ Of course you’re making all sorts of conclusions about my being in 
the cave room, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon? And your being about here at this 
time of night proves that you are full of suspicions.” 

He had begun in a calm tone, but again that curious, sudden change 
ensued; a loud, uncontrollable fierceness crept into his voice. Victor 
could see in the starlight that the manager’s eyes were glaring wildly, 
that his hands were twitching, and that his face was working convulsively. 

“ He must be drunk,” was the thought that passed through his mind. 
And there was some truth in the supposition, though there was much 


240 


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more than ordinary intoxication to account for Trevaskis’s uncontrollable 
excitement. He had been working on Friday night till near daylight. 
On Saturday night, after receiving official instructions to clear out the 
late manager’s effects, he had not gone to bed at all. He had worked 
all night and part of Sunday ; now it was two o’clock on Monday morn- 
ing, and, after all, he had been almost caught with his pots and bars of 
gold. All his sleepless nights and brilliant visions of success, all his 
schemes and contrivances, had been in vain. This boy, who had from 
the first come to spy on him, had overreached him in the end. His 
brain whirled and everything swam round him as he spoke. A sudden 
murderous instinct rose within him to take Victor by the throat and 
crush the life out of him. The paroxysm passed away, leaving him 
miserably shaken, and with an almost insane longing to tell Fitz-Gibbon 
the whole truth — to take him into the cave room there and then, and 
show him the great, gleaming heap of gold in massy bars, the bottles full 
of amalgam, and cry, “ This all belongs to the company !” 

Victor, perceiving that the man was laboring under some cruel 
emotion, and believing that his brain and imagination were demoralized 
just then by strong drink, answered him in the tones that turn away 
wrath. Great personal happiness makes even hardened natures mag- 
nanimous, much more one that is innately generous and has not as yet 
been indurated either by time or calamity. The imputations thrown 
out against him by Trevaskis would, under ordinary circumstances, have 
prevented Victor offering any explanation as to his presence at the office 
with the engineer. But it had been forced on him that the manager’s 
morbid suspicions were like a disease which he was unable to get rid of. 
He therefore fully explained his meeting with Jenkins, and Trevaskis 
listened and believed. But when, after mid-day on the morrow, he met 
Victor coming out of the telegraph office, all his old suspicions returned. 
He himself had gone there to send a message to his brother, imploring 
him to come at all hazards, without a day’s longer delay. 

Trevaskis had resolved, as a last resource, to shift all the gold and 
amalgam to the hut he had erected on the claim near the broken-down 
whim as soon as his brother could arrive. He had that morning bought 
a strong spring-cart and a stout horse from a man who had left the dig- 
gings at the Creek very much down on his luck. He was negotiating 
with the company for the purchase of certain old machinery, which they 
were only too glad to sell. There would be two or three loads in all. 
In the dead of night he would load the cart with the gold and amalgam, 
tied up in old sacks. In the morning he would have some of the ma- 
chinery fixed in the cart, with Dan to help, and after Dan started he 
would overtake him on horseback, and explain that his load was worth, 
not an old song for old iron, but twenty thousand pounds ! 


THE SILENT SEA 


241 


Even in the thick of all his terrors and anxieties, and the profound 
physical nervousness that assailed him from time to time, he would dwell 
with a sense of intoxicating elation on the sense of getting the gold all 
safe away. He would see Dan driving slowly on the big, dusty track 
towards Broombush Creek, looking from time to time around him, as he 
got half way, for the great white posts of the broken-down whim, beyond 
which he was to slue off to the left for a mile and a half to the lonely 
hut, which could be clearly seen from the vicinity of the old well. 

Then he would go galloping after him, and that night they would make 
a recess in the floor of the hut in which to hide the gold. 

“That quartz claim will turn out the richest in the history of Austra- 
lian mining, only this wonT get into history,” he thought. And then 
he chuckled to himself as he pictured Fitz-Gibbon going solemnly into 
the cave room and making his ineffectual search. But all this hung on 
Dan’s speedy arrival. He despatched his telegram, wording it as strongly 
as possible. As he came out of the telegraph oflSce, he met Victor face 
to face. Was he going to send a message as to the further delay in his 
search of the cave room ? He resolved to keep a brave front to the last, 
and flght to the uttermost for delay, hoping for Dan’s speedy return. 
A few minutes after he had seen Victor go back to his oflSce, Trevaskis 
followed him, to make a certain statement regarding the search of the 
cave room. As soon as he entered Victor rose, saying, 

“ I was just coming to see you, captain. I want to get away to town 
for a few. days.” 

“ To town for a few days ?” repeated Trevaskis, mechanically. 

“ Yes ; will you be well enough to clean up the gold this week ?” 

“ I intend to do so on Thursday.” 

“ Oh, that will suit me famously. I can then start by the afternoon 
coach on Friday, and pay the men when I return.” 

“ How long shall you be away ?” 

“ Not more than four or flve days at the longest.” 

“ Not more than four or flve days?” repeated the manager, in the same 
mechanical voice in which he had first responded to the purser’s announce- 
ment. 

It would be impossible to disentangle the chaos of thoughts that darted 
through his mind. But clear above all else rose the conviction : “ He is 
now sure about the treasure ; he is going to secure police assistance.” 
Trevaskis vStruggled to act on the belief. It seemed as if he spent several 
moments in trying to utter the words, “You’d better come down into 
the cave room this morning and have a look round. The half-search I 
made last night makes me believe there’s some gold hidden there.” 

But every instinct of his nature rose up in revolt against this surren- 
der. Each faculty of his mind became centred in one supreme effort to 
16 


242 


THE SILENT SEA 


gain time. To have so much wealth in his possession — the end and aim 
of his dearest ambitions, the object of his most jealous passions — and 
then to give it all up ! No, no ! not so long as the ghost of a chance of 
success remained. 

“ I suppose I could put ofE paying the men till I returned on Tuesday 
or Wednesday said Victor, looking a little wonderingly at the mana- 
ger’s haggard face. 

“ Certainly, that will be all right ; I came in to say that, owing to the 
arrears of work caused by my sore eyes, I cannot go into the cave room 
with you for a few days.” 

“ Oh, we’ll let it slide till I return,” said Victor carelessly. 

The manager looked at him narrowly. Then, sinking his voice and 
speaking in a semi-confidential tone, he said, 

“The fact is that, judging from a cursory examination, I am under 
the impression that Dunning’s effects were tampered with after his death. 
It will be, therefore, better that we should act conjointly in this matter.” 

“But the keys were in Searle’s possession till he delivered them to 
you,” said Victor quickly. 

“ Exactly, and therefore I am going to write a note to him asking a 
few leading questions,” answered Trevaskis coldly, as he walked away. 
When he reached the door he turned as if struck by an after-thought. 

“ It will be about the eighth of December when you get away. You 
have spoken about leaving the mine at Christmas time. Do you think 
of making any arrangement about resigning when you are in town ?” 

Victor hesitated before replying. He could not explain that his move- 
ments depended on the course of events at Stonehouse, nor did he think 
it advisable to say that he knew of a suitable candidate ready to apply 
for the pursership as soon as it was vacant. His friend, Maurice Cum- 
ming, had recently bespoken Victor’s interest in the matter, finding that 
a little extra ready money for a year to come would materially aid him- 
self and his brother in their strenuous fight at Wynans against the rab- 
bits. Victor by this time knew enough of the manager’s jealous and 
suspicious temperament to feel sure that to speak of his friend’s appoint- 
ment as a foregone conclusion would be an impolitic measure. He there- 
fore compromised the matter by saying, 

“ I don’t think I shall decide about the date of my leaving till later 
on. I believe we shall find no difficulty in getting a purser at a short 
notice.” 

Of course, the half-embarrassed pause and the cautious reply could 
bear but one interpretation to Trevaskis. 

“ I knew it — I knew it ! He is going to try and snare me like a rat 
in a hole !” he muttered to himself as he strode away. 

He hurried into his office, fearful of betraying the passion of impotent 


THE SILENT SEA 


243 


rage which he felt threatened to carry him beyond all bounds. As soon 
as he had gained his own room he broke into a volley of the most horri- 
ble imprecations ; his eyes started in their sockets, and he foamed at the 
mouth. 

His first coherent thought was one of terror. I am going mad — I 
am going mad !” he said to himself repeatedly, staring at his face in a 
small, square looking-glass that hung above the wash-stand in his bed- 
room. His wild, distorted eyes ; his livid skin ; the great, cold drops of 
perspiration that stood on his forehead ; the tremor which at short inter- 
vals shook him from head to foot, were all repetitions of the paroxysm 
that had overtaken him for the first time in his life in the small hours of 
the morning. 

He tried to reason, but thought failed him. He lost all grasp of the 
subject or the plan that struggled through his mind. One after the 
other, terrible pictures rose before him, irrespective of mental volition. 
He followed one man who crept with treacherous footsteps to commit 
murder ; he saw another suddenly stricken down dead ; and still another 
writhing in madness. . . . 

When he grew calmer, he reasoned with himself that it was not incip- 
ient madness that had attacked him, but the result of constantly dwell- 
ing on exciting thoughts ; of utter sleeplessness for three days and two 
nights; the want of proper food; a dangerous use of stimulants; and, 
to crown the whole, this sudden, overwhelming terror that all would be 
in vain — that Fitz-Gibbon had acquired a certain knowledge of the stolen 
gold, and was dogging all his actions. Probably he had last night bribed 
the engineer to tamper with the pan-shaft, so as to have witnesses as to 
the manager’s visit to the cave room. 

Now he was going to the directors with his tale ; of what use would 
it be to try and hide so great a quantity ? A black tracker, or even an 
ordinary detective, would trace it like a beaten highway. He must think 
of some plan — something that would give him time, that would save 
him. But the moment that he tried to think or frame a plan, a throb- 
bing came in the back of his head, like the rapid echoes of a hammer 
beating persistently, maddeningly. He must sleep for seven or eight 
hours at a stretch. 

He took one of his accustomed rounds, seeing to all that was being 
done; he gave some directions to the shift-bosses who would be in charge 
of the night-gangs underground. Then he summoned Mick, and told 
him to let no one knock at his office-door, or disturb him in any way ; 
he was feeling ill, and was going to have a good sleep. He undressed 
and went to bed at four o’clock in the afternoon. But the room seemed 
full of sounds ; sudden cries, strange voices, and violent shouts rent the 
air. He drank glass after glass of almost undiluted brandy ; but instead 


244 


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of serving as a soporific, this for a time made him more acutely conscious 
of the ruin that stared him in the face, while his power of connected 
thought had absolutely deserted him. At last he fell into a deep, dream- 
less stupor, from which he did not awaken till near sunrise the next 
morning. 

His head was aching, but the long rest and unconsciousness had in a 
measure restored his mental balance. He brewed himself a pot of tea, 
and drank cup after cup, hot and strong, till his headache was almost 
gone. But the moment his anxieties and fears and surmises returned 
upon him, he felt that dull, persistent, all-absorbing beat in his brain — 
that vague wandering of mind ; his train of thought lost suddenly, as if 
in an unsounded deep — which had before terrified him. He went about 
the business of the mine all that morning, resolutely" turning his mind 
away from the torturing and distracting thoughts of the cave room. He 
reflected that the cleaning-up on Thursday would yield the largest aver- 
age to the ton of quartz which had ever been reported at the Colmar. 
There had been a steady and continuous increase of gold since he came, 
while at the same time the working expenses of the mine had been, by 
his unrelaxing vigilance in every department, considerably diminished. 

Nor had any of these points escaped recognition by the directors. 
Within the last month they had given him a considerable rise in his sal- 
ary, at the same time complimenting him highly on the unprecedented 
success which had marked his tenure of management, and expressing a 
hope that he would see his way to enter on a fixed term of office. This 
Trevaskis had so far refrained from doing, on the ground that circum- 
stances might in any month compel him to resign. 

Thinking over these things as he went through the routine of his mine 
work on Tuesday forenoon, Trevaskis reflected that, though Drummond 
might lend a willing ear to his nephew’s tales, the directors as a body 
would be very loath to take any action that would reflect on a manager 
who had in less than three months made his value felt in so marked a 
manner. ... If he could only by some means fasten a quarrel upon Fitz- 
Gibbon apart from the matter of the cave room — some stigma of care- 
lessness, of neglect of duty ! 

It would be so readily believed that a young man of independent 
means, who came to the mine for a mere freak, and who could leave it 
at any moment without the least detriment to his prospects, should fail 
in some respects to work like a man whose daily bread depended on his 
daily work. . . . But as Trevaskis reviewed the manner in which Victor 
discharged his duties, he failed to recall any instance of negligence more 
serious than forgetting to lock the oflice-door on one or two occasions 
when he left for the night. 

, Arrived at this point in his cogitations, Trevaskis suddenly stood mo- 


THE SILENT SEA 


245 


tionless. He was in the pan-room, where the loosened wheel was giving 
some trouble. But he had decided not to have it touched till Thursday, 
so that the "yield of gold should not be impaired by any stoppage. The 
din around him seemed all at once to sharpen his faculties, so that he 
saw, as in a completed picture, the scheme after which he had been 
vainly groping. He had found it — he held the clue. 

Towards sunset he saddled his horse and rode across to his claim near 
the broken-down whim, so as to get his scheme all clear and straight 
before him. This was the plan he formed : on Thursday, after he and 
Fitz-Gibbon had cleaned up the gold and locked it in the safe as usual, 
he would hand his key to the purser and ask him to keep it till Friday 
morning, as he was going across to Broombush Creek and would most 
likely stay there that night. He had done this three weeks ago, so 
there would be nothing unusual in either action ; the unusual part would 
come later on. He would return shortly after midnight, get the dupli- 
cate keys which he had found in Dunning’s private box, go into the 
purser’s oflSce through the inside entrance, and take away the seven hun- 
dred ounces of gold. 

In the morning, when Victor gave him back the key, he would, as 
was customary under such circumstances, have the safe unlocked, so as 
to make sure that all was right. The safe would be empty ! A hue- 
and-cry would be raised. His first duty as manager would be to send 
an official telegram to the directors. The police trooper would at once 
begin to search round ; so would he — Trevaskis ; and that night he 
would discover the gold where the thief had secreted it. Then Fitz- 
Gibbon would no doubt go on to town as he proposed. He might, per- 
haps, be confident that the keys had not been out of his possession ; but 
there the facts would be public and patent to all. The same train that 
conveyed Fitz-Gibbon to town would carry a letter to the directors from 
the mine-manager, declining to act any longer with a purser whose negli- 
gence had so nearly cast an irretrievable slur on them both. He would 
point out that if the thief had succeeded in carrying off the gold as 
easily as he had obtained possession of the keys and rifled the safe, the 
consequences to him, as a poor man, with a wife and family dependent 
on his sole exertions for a livelihood, would have been serious in the ex- 
treme. Any insinuations made against him by Fitz-Gibbon would then 
bear a very suspicious aspect. If he went to the trouble of stirring up 
an inquiry as to the cave room, he would take up the position that he 
had special reasons for not caring to interfere with Dunning’s effects till 
his legal representative was on the spot. By the time that a week or 
two was consumed, the treasure would be secured in a way that would 
leave no possibility of recovery. Then they could search till they were 
black in the face. 


246 


THE SILENT SEA 


Trevaskis laughed aloud in his glee as he saw himself at last triumph- 
ing over all dangers and obstacles. He went over the whole scheme 
time after time, strengthening lame places and elaborating little details, 
during his ride to and from his quartz claim. He worked that night in 
the cave room again for several hours, after finding that he could not 
close his eyes in sleep. 

During the next two days his demeanor to Victor was more friendly 
than usual. He was most of the time slightly under the influence of drink. 
He tried to refrain, feeling that in his excited state the use of stimulants 
was dangerous. But the tension of his nerves, the fits of miserable un- 
certainty which assailed him, the almost total lack of appetite, and the 
loss of sleep, made it impossible for him to bear up without a liberal re- 
course to the old Bordeaux brandy of which he had a case in his office. 
Nor had he any dread that the habit to which he yielded at this pinch 
would take a mischievous hold of him. He regarded his drams as a 
sort of medicine that would help him over a steep pull, like doses of 
quinine for ague fever. 

The gold cleaning-up was over by half-past six o’clock on Thursday. 

“ I am going over to Broombush Creek, to see one of the managers 
there. I’ll most likely stay the night, and perhaps have a little turkey- 
shooting on the way back. I’d better leave my key in your charge,” 
said Trevaskis, as he was leaving the office, after the two bars of gold 
were locked up. 

All right. Of course you’ll be back before I leave?” 

‘‘ Oh, yes. I’ll be here by eleven in the morning at latest.” 

And with that the two parted. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

A CELEBRATED Greek philosopher was of opinion that women were 
only created when Nature found that the imperfection of matter did not 
permit her to carry on the world without them. It is possible that 
some might demur to this ; but most of us would be ready to admit that 
letters are written chiefly because of the imperfect development of our 
senses. And yet there are certain communications which one might pre- 
fer to make in a little note, even if telepathy were an assured and exact 
science. 

Of this kind was the announcement that Victor had to make to Miss 
Paget. He had put away the thought of their actual meeting as often 
as it had arisen ; but now that he was to set out on the morrow, and the 


THE SILENT SEA 247 

hour was drawing so near in which his story must be told, its awkward- 
ness came home to him more and more. 

He reflected how very frequently he had found Mrs. Tillotson installed 
with Helen for the afternoon or evening, how often she was summoned 
by her father into the library, and, still more embarrassing, he thought 
how very foolish he would feel when it gradually dawned on Miss Paget 
that he had come, not to woo, but to make a confession and ride away. 
Yes, on the whole, it would be better to write a little note — one which, 
without going into tedious details, would put Helen en rapport with his 
position. This he would leave at Lancaster House personally as soon as 
he reached town, leaving a message that he should call an hour later. 
He had almost succeeded in persuading himself that his mother’s sug- 
gestion was true — that Miss Paget had fixed a term of probation, not so 
much to test his fidelity, as to let him down gently without too abrupt 
a refusal. But, as he sat at his desk to write his little preparatory letter 
after Trevaskis had left the oflSce, certain recollections arose which made 
his task a difficult one. 

He wanted to find words that would put the matter adroitly and deli- 
cately, but all the finer nuances of expression seemed to escape from his 
pen. After writing half a sheet he stared at it discontentedly, and then 
sat resting his head on his hand. The day had been sultry and airless. 
He had been at work from five in the morning, and it was now nearly 
seven. The pen slipped from his hand. He did not fall asleep, but he 
went off into a waking dream. Some lines he had read in an old poet 
came back to him : 

“Open the temple gates unto my love; 

Open them wide, that she may enter in.” 

A look of beatitude overspread his face. Suddenly he was startled by 
the sound of a dull, loud report, speedily followed by a second and a 
third. He thrust his unfinished letter into the drawer of his desk and 
went to the outer door of the assay-room. Roby stood talking to the 
mine blacksmith a few paces away. 

“ What are these reports, Roby ? Are they making another grave ?” 
asked Victor. 

“ Ah, Mr. Purser, in the midst o’ life we are in death !” answered 
Roby, with the strong nasal accent habitual to him when giving expres- 
sion to any serious sentiment. Then he explained that one of the Con- 
nell children had died of fever that morning. The father and another 
miner were now employed in blasting out a grave in the little cemetery, 
which was within half a mile of the mine, where the ground was so ada- 
mantine that it could not be dug out in the ordinary way. Victor had 
recognized the sounds, having heard them on a few occasions previ- 
ously. This process of forcing a last resting-place from the blue-clay 


248 


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slate-rock had always seemed to him a rather horrible preface to being 
buried. Just then, when he was lost in blissful waking dreams, the thought 
of death struck a sudden chill to his heart. He was turning impatiently 
away from Roby, who seemed inclined to improve the occasion, when 
Michael reached the door of the assay-room with a message for the 
purser. It was to the effect that Circus Bill’s trap with passengers from 
Broombush Creek was going to start at daybreak, so as to reach Nil- 
peena in time for the early train to town. 

“ I thoht, as ye were going, sor, to-morrow, ye moight loike to start 
early, so as to save the waiting at Nilpeena. ’Tis a sthrange droiver, 
Circus himself being laid up at Broombush wid a touch av snnsthroke. 
It’s glad oi am he washn’t tuk wid the same on the way from Nilpeena, 
for the sake av the lady that come to Shtonehouse.” 

“Has a lady come to Stonehouse?” asked Victor. “At what time? 
Have you heard who she is ?” 

Michael, who spoke of the new arrival solely because he divined that 
anything which related to Stonehouse was of passing importance to the 
young purser, was not surprised to find the eager interest with which he 
received the news. He, however, knew nothing beyond the fact that a 
lady had arrived by Circus Bill’s trap half an hour before the mail-coach 
came in. As soon as Victor had despatched the little man to ask the 
driver to secure a seat in the early trap, he went across to Stonehouse. 
When he reached the house he found an air of unusual bustle pervading 
it. Shung-Loo was flitting about the place with as near an approach to 
a smile as his face ever wore. Bridget was hurrying in and out between 
the kitchen and dining-room ; Euphemia had a large basket of fiowers in 
the veranda, which she was arranging in vases on the little wicker table. 
When Victor joined her she had a great deal to tell him. Her aunt, 
Mrs. Murray, had come from Ouranie, Doris’s old home. She had all 
at once made up her mind when she found that Mr. Challoner’s illness 
was likely to be a lingering one. 

“ She has come to stay and help to nurse father, and see that mother 
gets plenty of sleep, and that Doris does not do too much. Aunt thinks 
she is looking rather too pale.” 

“But there is nothing wrong with her. She was well this morning,” 
interrupted Victor anxiously. 

“Oh, yes; she isn’t ill, you know,” answered Euphemia placidly. 
“But she went to see Mamie Connell — that little girl who has been so 
ill — and found she had died. Then aunt came and brought a lot of 
things from Ouranie. . . . Doris is in her own room now, reading over 
and over a little old book that belonged to her mother. You can always 
tell when she thinks of her mother . . . she sits so still and her eyes 
get so large and dark.” 


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A summons to dinner put an end to Eupbemia’s confidences. As the 
patient had fallen into a sound sleep, all the household assembled at this 
meal. Victor was duly introduced to the new-comer — a bright, active 
little woman, who treated her journey of over two hundred miles to the 
Salt-bush country as if it were an afternoon drive. 

“You all look as if you needed twelve hours’ sleep on end,” she said, 
glancing at her sister and the two girls. “ I think I had better send you 
all to bed in an hour after dinner.” 

But there was a general outcry against this. One who had come off 
a long, fatiguing journey could not be allowed to sit up on any pretence. 

“ It is you who must go to bed soon after dinner, auntie, and in my 
little room,” said Euphemia. 

But Doris objected to this proposition. Her room was much larger ; 
besides, there was a couch in it, and on that she herself could sleep very 
well. On this Victor joined in. 

“ I know it is not in human nature to sleep in three rooms at once ; 
but as my room will be empty, I think it ought to have the honor of 
Mrs. Murray’s presence.” 

He went on to explain that as he intended to start by Circus Bill’s 
trap, which was going to Nilpeena in the small hours of the morning, it 
would be more convenient for him to sleep on the bunk in his office, 
where he would be nearer Scroog’s place, from which the trap started. 
As Victor made this announcement he met Doris’s eyes with a half- 
inquiring, wistful little look in them, which made him thrill with pleasure. 

“ Tell me, Doris, are you sorry I am going away for a few days ?” he 
asked a little later, with all the egotism of a young lover. 

They had adjourned to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Murray, instead 
of taking it easy, as behooved a wearied traveller, began to write a long 
letter to her husband. Mrs. Challoner had returned to the sick-room, 
and Euphemia was engaged in rifling the numerous vases she had re- 
cently filled of some of the white flowers they contained. 

“ Yes. I am a little sad even when you go away to the mine in the 
morning. I always look after you, though you do not see me.” 

“ Oh, you perfect little darling !” murmured the young man in a voice 
made tremulous with joy. 

“ How strange it would be,” continued Doris, “ if one of us two died 
like that little — ” 

“Oh, don’t, Doris — don’t speak or think of anything so dreadful!” 
said Victor, in an imploring voice. 

She was silent for a little time, and then said softly, 

“ But, Victor, you must think of it one day. Even if we lived here a 
hundred years, what a tiny speck of time it is compared to the thousands 
and thousands that have come and gone ! Everything and every one goes 


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away after a little time. That is why I try so often to think what the 
other world can be like.” 

“But, my own Doris, is not this world enough for you just now? 
Why think of any other ?” 

“ I must think of another, because maman is no longer here,” she an- 
swered, fixing her wide-open eyes on his face. Then, after a little pause, 
“ Did you ever lose any one that you loved very much ?” 

“ No. I can hardly remember my father.” 

“ Ah, that is the reason that you like to think only of this life. If 
you had lost any one that you loved as I love mother, you could not help 
trying to imagine day by day where she is, and what she is doing or say- 
ing. You could not help feeling oftentimes that she still thinks about 
yon. Oh, how much I should like to know whether the flowers that she 
loved so much grow there, and whether ‘ the river of water of life, clear 
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God,’ looks to her like the 
waters of Gauwaril Perhaps you do not like me to talk like this to 
you?” 

“ Oh, yes, Doris. Only — I know I am a selfish wretch — I would 
rather that thoughts of me pushed nearly all others out of your mind.” 

“So they often do — all but mother. And to-day, more than ever, I 
keep thinking of her all the time. First, when I went down to see little 
Mamie Connell, and found that she had gone away in the night — ” 

“ Gone away ?” repeated Victor wonderingly. 

“ Yes ; that is what really happens, you know, when people die. The 
mother was crying in a loud way. I don’t know why, but it made me 
feel almost unkind to her, when she made such a noise. She kept on 
sobbing because there was no priest. As if that could matter, when the 
poor dear child went home to God !” 

“ Oh, you little Protestant ! You must know that I am of Mrs. Con- 
nell’s way of thinking. If I were dying I should be very uncomfortable 
if there were no priest to look after me. Not that there need be the 
same fear for poor little Mamie.” 

“ But why should you want a priest ?” 

“ Because he would, I hope, help to make things a little straight for 
me.” 

“ Wouldn’t you feel sure that you were going to heaven ?” 

“ No — not at all.” 

“ Then what do you think might become of you ?” 

“ Dearie, I would rather not say. I am awfully weak in theology. 
Besides, I want to hear you talk. I want to hear about the rest of your 
day.” 

“ When I saw Mamie she made me think so much of darling mother. 
T felt as if I w'anted to go to her that moment.” 


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251 


“ Oh, Doris ! didn’t you think of me 

“Not just then; I could only think of mother. As I stood at the 
door of Mrs. Connell’s house, telling her I would bring some of the flow- 
ers that Mamie used to like so much, a trap passed by quickly, with a 
lady on the front seat. I thought she looked very much like Mrs. Mur- 
ray, only I couldn’t be sure. Then when I reached home, here she was. 
She brought a boxful of things from Ouranie : some of the early fruits, 
flowers from the garden and grasses from the banks of the lake, pict- 
ures and books. One of them is full of little old French rhymes that 
mother used to sing to me when I was a small child.” 

“ Tell me some of them, if you please — that is, if you remember 
any.” 

“ Oh, yes ; I shall never forget them. They are old berceuses with 
words strung together that have a sleepy sound, like this : 

“ ‘ Soin, som, som, beni, beni, beni, beni, 

Beni d’endacoui, 

Som, som, beni d’endacou.’ ” 

Doris crooned the words in a low, monotonous voice. 

“That sounds very dreamy and wise,” said Victor. “Perhaps I 
should not ask what ‘ Som, som, som,’ means.” 

“ It is like asking sleep to come. They are not all nonsense-words ; 
they are chants to make you happy and good. ‘ Come, Sleep,’ say some 
of them, ‘ and keep the child safe and quiet. Mother has to work, and 
father has to go into the woods.’ Often these little chansons come to me 
when I am asleep, just as mother used to sing them. Sometimes the 
little *Som, soms’ promise to give a good child towns and villages — 
even Constantinople.” 

“ That ought to make any right-thinking baby fall fast asleep, I should 
think.” 

Doris smiled, and then said, 

“ The one I like best begins, ‘ Dors, dors, doux oiseau de la prairie.’ ” 

“ Say it in English, like a good child.” 

“ ‘ Sleep, sleep, gentle bird of the plain ; take thy repose, redbreast, 
take thy repose God will awake thee in his good time. Sleep is at 
the door, and says, “Is there not here a little infant — a little infant 
sleeping in its cradle — a little infant swaddled — a little infant reposing 
on a blanket of wool ?” Here — ’ ” 

“ Doris, do you think there will be enough to make this cross for 
Mrs. Connell said Euphemia, approaching the two with a basketful of 
white flowers, chiefly moss-roses, marguerites, and jasmine. 

“ Yes — more than enough, I think,” answered Doris ; “ only I hardly 
know how to make it. Mrs. Connell said she would like the flowers 


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made into a cross,” she said, turning to Victor, who sat looking at Eu- 
phemia, wondering whether any providential circumstance would arise to 
call her away. 

On hearing Doris’s explanation, he, of course, volunteered his help. 
He went out into Mr. Challoner’s workshop, and soon returned with a 
cross formed by nailing together two small, flat boards, fashioned accord- 
ing to the proportions of a small gold cross which he had on his watch- 
chain. He watched Doris covering this artless wooden cross with flow- 
ers, fastening them by the stems with a narrow white ribbon, while he 
handed her the flowers and Euphemia looked on. 

“ Sing me another little ‘ Som, som,’ ” said Victor, after some mo- 
ments, half resenting Doris’s absorption in this pathetic little task. 

Then in a low, half-mysterious voice Doris crooned the words, 

“ ‘ Dedans le bois, dedans le bois, 

Savez-vous ce qu’il y a? 

II y a un arbre 

Le plus beau des arbres; 

L’arbre est dans le bois. 

Oh, oh, oh, le bois — 

Le plus joli de tous les bois!”* 

* * * ♦ 

At last Victor was forced to go and pack his portmanteau. When he 
returned to say good-by, Mrs. Murray’s letter was flnished, and she sat 
talking with the two girls. Doris had completed her last offering to the 
little one who had “gone away” so early that morning. It lay on the 
table, the great symbol of renunciation, wreathed with soft, snow-white 
blooms. Doris held it up for Victor to see ; but he hardly looked at it 
— his eyes were fixed on her face. 

There was no further opportunity for speaking to her alone ; but as 
he bade her good-by she held out both hands to him, her face irradiated 
with an expression of confiding love, which made him feel that it was 
worth while to go away for the sake of such a look. 

It was after ten when he reached his office. He had to write up some 
entries in the cash-book. He began to nod over this, and it was with 
difficulty he kept himself awake till the work was finished. At last the 
books were put away, and merely removing his coat, waistcoat, and 
boots, Victor threw himself on the bunk with a travelling-rug over his 
feet. 

But just as he was falling asleep, he recollected that he had the man- 
ager’s key, and that he would be gone hours before Trevaskis returned. 
With an effort he roused himself to consider how he should leave it in a 
place of safety. He relit the lamp, put the safe-key in an official en- 
velope addressed to Trevaskis, locking it in the right-hand drawer of the 


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253 


table at which he habitually sat. Then he wrote a memo, to say that he 
was taking advantage of Circus Bill’s trap going so early, so as to save 
waiting at Nilpeena; that he had locked the safe-key in the drawer, and 
that the key thereof was enclosed in this memo. He took both to the 
manager’s oflSce, going to it through the intermediate store-rooms. He 
took his bunch of office-keys with him, expecting that he should have to 
unlock at least two of the three doors which intervened between his own 
and the manager’s office; but they were all unlocked, and feeling sure 
that Trevaskis must have left them thus for some reason of his own, Vic- 
tor left them as he found them. 

This excursion wakened him up so thoroughly that it was close upon 
twelve when he dozed off again. Before he could be said to have fallen 
asleep he was roused by some movement ; but he was so loath to get up 
the second time that he did not move till he distinctly heard the sound 
of a key being thrust into the lock of the safe. 


CHAPTER XXXHI. 

Trevaskis returned to the mine at a quarter to twelve, after drinking 
heavily at the leading hotel at Broombush Creek. He had abstained 
from all stimulant during the day, and meant to keep absolutely cool 
and sober till this crucial affair of temporary theft was done with ; but 
the fatigue and heat of the day, combined with his inability to eat and 
the tense excitement under which he labored, combined to break down 
his resolution. So far, however, from feeling incapacitated for carrying 
out his plans, it seemed to him that the fillip which brandy gave his 
spirits and imagination formed an additional element of success. 

He put his horse in the stable, and then went into his rooms by the 
outer door of his office. He had, in the course of the afternoon, come 
through the intermediate rooms from Victor’s, leaving the doors un- 
locked, so that he might pass through in the dark without a light. After 
much consideration, he had decided to hide the gold in the safe in his 
own room. It would be the safest plan. Then, as soon as darkness 
fell, on the succeeding night he would go out with the gold, and come 
down the face of the reef with it, nearly opposite the engine-room, tri- 
umphantly displaying the two bars, as he had recovered them, wrapped 
round with a piece of stained cloth, where they had, no doubt, been 
hidden by the thief, under some stones, till he should be able to carry 
them off at his leisure. 

It was these after-details that occupied his mind as he reached the safe 


254 


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with the pair of duplicate keys. He was so sure of his ground that he 
could manage all without lighting even a match. He knew that there 
were always some of the miners who lingered at the inn till after mid- 
night, and who, on returning, would sometimes stroll to the engine-house. 
If they saw a light at so unusual an hour in the purser’s office, they would 
as likely come as not, in their idle, irresponsible way, to see what “ was 
up.” He shot back both bolts, and was in the act of taking up the first 
bar of gold, when he thought he heard footsteps at the door. He had 
not time to withdraw his head from the safe, when a strong grip on his 
arm for a moment paralyzed him, and a voice cried in his ear. 

Who are you ? What are you doing here?” 

In a moment he had recovered from his stupefaction. With the fury 
of a beast of prey suddenly attacked, he closed in the darkness with the 
man, whose grasp warned him that he was not one who could be lightly 
shaken off. Backing out from the safe, and without uttering a word, he 
threw both arms round his antagonist like a vice, and flung him fiercely 
round. As he did this, the man’s head came against the edge of the iron 
safe with a horrible dull thud. At once his hold relaxed. He gave one 
low, shuddering moan, and Trevaskis felt him in his arms a limp, inani- 
mate burden. He slowly released him, letting him slide to the ground 
without allowing him to fall heavily. He lay there without a movement, 
or even the sound of breathing. And then an awful silence fell on the 
room. 

Trevaskis was incapable of coherent thought. His first instinct was 
to recover the keys and make off ; but he had dropped a bar of gold. 
It was under the man’s motionless form. As he groped about, he came 
on a fine cambric handkerchief — one that had a suspicion of the breath 
of violets on it. Then, with a cold, trembling hand, he touched the 
man’s face. The cheeks were smooth ; on the upper lip there was a 
slight silken moustache. A suspicion of the truth flashed on him. He 
remembered that a lamp usually stood on the window-sill ; he groped for 
it, and lit it after he had ineffectually struck two or three matches. He 
could never recollect the first instant in which the prostrate man’s face 
became visible to him. After what seemed long moments, he found him- 
self with a heart that throbbed to bursting, his eyes riveted on Fitz-Gibbon, 
who lay as he fell, without sound or motion. And, as he looked, the 
words came to him like the hiss of a serpent : ‘‘ By and by you get over 
that, and you go on and on till — ” Now the blank was filled. Trem- 
bling in every limb, he knelt down beside Victor. 

‘‘My God! I have killed him! I have killed him! I have killed 
him !” He murmured the words over and over automatically, while the 
perspiration rolled in great, cold beads down his face. 

For some moments the power of thought was suspended. He tried in 


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255 


a stupefied, mechanical way to recollect what he had proposed to do. 
But here, even if his memory had been clear and active, it would have 
afforded him little assistance. It was all the work of less than three 
minutes; but in that infinitesimal space of time he found himself in 
the grim clutches of a deed wholly at variance with the purpose which 
had called it into being. 

It is this tragic, unlooked-for evolution of events that, all through 
man’s history, makes him so largely the puppet of forces with which he 
may gamble, but which he can never wholly control. Nearly all the 
criminals who become such through accident, rather than temperament, 
owe their first plunge into lawlessness to the unforeseen development of 
circumstances rather than to determined purpose. 

No, no ; he doesn’t move nor breathe ; he is dead — he is dead — he 
is dead !” moaned Trevaskis under his breath, his eyes fixed on the livid 
bruise above Victor’s right temple. He felt for a pulse in vain ; he held 
the glass of his watch against the parted lips; he placed his hand above 
the heart; but he found no symptom of life. Trevaskis rose up, looking 
wildly around. His brain, which had been demoralized for so many days 
by fiery stimulant, by ceaseless excitement, without proper rest or nour- 
ishment, had at this crisis lost all power of initiative. 

Twice he essayed to blow out the lamp, with a vague purpose of going 
away, of saddling his horse and riding back to Broombush ; but no, 
even already he felt himself in the toils. He had kept away from the 
main track on his return, so as to avoid any one he knew, and yet, within 
two miles of Colmar, he had been accosted in the starlight by three 
horsemen, one of them the manager who had dined at the Colmar Arras 
on the day that Yansittart made up his story about the fortune he had 
discovered at a gold mine. The thought of this chance encounter made 
him feel as if all effort at concealing his guilt would be abortive. Which- 
ever way he turned he seemed to see himself beset by unknown risks, from 
which he could find no ultimate escape. 

‘‘ I have murdered him ! I have murdered him !” he gasped hoarsely, 
staring at the prostrate body, his face gray with terror. Presently, with 
a wild rebellion against the horror of it all, he flung himself down once 
more by Victor’s motionless form, chafing his hands, uncovering his 
chest, and raising his head. Then he got some water, with which he 
wetted the young man’s lips, face, and hands. But there was no tremor 
of returning life — all its pulses seemed to have ceased. O God ! he 
was already growing cold and stiff ! 

As this conviction fastened on him, Trevaskis stood once more rooted 
to the spot. He was overtaken by a nightmare sort of horror, in which 
all his consciousness was centred on one awful thought. He saw, as if 
in a series of pictures, the ghastly consequences of this night’s work. 


256 


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His arrest, his trial, the witnesses that would arise on every side, the 
damning evidence that would be supplied by the contents of the cave 
room. 

“ They won’t believe I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said, uttering the 
words in a horrified whisper, his parched lips cleaving to his teeth. 
“ And yet I didn’t — I didn’t — so help me God ! I had no thought of 
harming him.” One or two hot tears trickled down his cheeks. Grad- 
ually the very poignancy of his sufferings seemed to restore his stricken 
faculties. Part of one of the projects that had floated hazily through 
his brain, when rendered desperate by the thought of seeing the cave 
room searched, now came back to him. He hurried through the store- 
rooms to his office, and opened the door leading into the iron passage. 
Then he put a lighted candle in the cave room, preparatory to carrying 
Victor there. 

At first it seemed as if he were wholly unequal to the task. But, as 
he thought of all that lay at stake, the blood leaped in his veins with 
those throbs that chronicle moments during which physical impossibili- 
ties disappear. He lifted Victor in his arms, and, without once pausing 
on the way, carried him through the offices and the iron passage into the 
cave room. On reaching it he placed the inanimate form on the bunk 
near the entrance. As soon as he had done this, he hurried back into 
one of the stores in which a small quantity of dynamite was kept. He 
took five plugs and a cartridge, with the necessary wire to explode the 
charge, from a magneto-electric battery in his own office. Then he took 
the lamp back to the purser’s office, intending to extinguish it and leave 
it there. But he dared not. A sudden unreasoning, overwhelming hor- 
ror came over him that, if he went back in the dark, the face of the 
dead would stare at him from every side. Even at that moment, with 
the light full in his eyes, a conviction seized him that close behind, just 
over his shoulder if he looked, he would see a sight that would freeze 
his blood with terror. He leaned across the desk at which Victor used 
to work, and moaned piteously, 

0 God 1 O God ! is this to be my life after this ? Wherever I 
go, wherever I am, whatever I do, is this thing to be with me — never 
to leave me ? And I was warned, I was warned, but I would go on 
my way ! But oh, God in heaven ! though no one else would believe it, 
you know I did not mean to kill him, nor to lay a finger on him.” Tears 
coursed down his cheeks as he spoke, half in prayer, half in exculpa- 
tion. No, he had not meant it ; surely that would take away the guilt 
of the deed. This little outburst seemed to lessen the pressure on his 
brain. 

Yet, as he went back, he peered with wild eyes from side to side. 
When he reached the cave room he put the lamp on the little deal table, 


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257 

taking care not to let his eyes wander towards the bunk on which Victor 
was lying. 

Trevaskis’s plan was to let this charge off, so that it might appear Vic- 
tor’s death was due to the discharge while engaged in searching the place 
prior to his going to town. There would be the letter which he, the 
manager, had received on the subject less than a week ago, to bear wit- 
ness to Fitz-Gibbon’s wish to overhaul the cave room. Every one that 
knew anything of it knew that the place was littered with all sorts of 
odds and ends. A few plugs of damaged dynamite, accidentally ignited, 
would be the supposed cause of the explosion and of the young man’s 
death. But before firing the charge he would remove the smelted gold. 
He had hidden the bars underground, close to the bunk. 

As he was about to uncover them his gaze involuntarily rested on 
Victor. The next instant he was kneeling beside him with a low cry. 
If his eyes had not deluded him there was a slight tremor of the eyelids. 
Now, as he felt the pulses afresh, he thought he could detect a faint, un- 
certain beat. When he put his hand over the region of the heart, he was 
sure of it. 

Like most men who have lived much in the bush with workmen under 
them, Trevaskis had picked up some rough knowledge of surgery. Now 
that the first overmastering terror and excitement had passed away, leav- 
ing him comparatively sober, he noted symptoms in Victor’s condition 
that pointed to concussion of the brain. The inflexibility of the limbs, 
the coldness of the body, the all but imperceptible pulse and breath — 
he had noted these before in such cases. But as he recollected this he 
also recalled how, in the two worst instances that had come under his 
notice of concussion of the brain, the patients had, after lingering some 
days, died unconscious. . . . Would Fitz-Gibbon recover or die? 

With this thought arose the question as to what should be done with 
him under these altered circumstances. Should he take him back to the 
office and leave him till he was found lying there ? No one would have 
any clue as to the way the accident happened. Only, if he died, would 
not a chain of evidence be somehow forged that would incriminate the 
real culprit? At this thought Trevaskis stood for a moment irresolute. 
At last he determined to take Victor back and leave him on the floor in 
the office, with his head slightly raised. 

But when he attempted to carry him, as he had done before, he found 
himself quite unequal to the task. The stimulus of extreme terror was 
gone. The reaction had set in. The varying emotions he had passed 
through had dissipated his strength. He went to his room to fortify 
himself with a dose of brandy. All the time he was torn in two direc- 
tions, whether to hide Victor in the cave room and tend him till he found 
whether he died or recovered, or take him back and allow him to be dis- 
17 


258 


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covered in his unconscious state on the morrow in the ordinary course 
of events. 

He lit a candle in his room and helped himself to some brandy and 
water. As he was in the act of drinking this, he noticed Victor’s note 
on the table, with the key of his drawer. He had barely taken in the 
fact that the young man’s presence in the office was due to his intention 
to start by Circus Bill’s trap at four in the morning, when he heard a low, 
continuous knocking at his office door. He instantly blew out the light, 
and waited in silence to find whether he was the victim of the insane 
fears that in so short a time had taken fast hold of him. But no ; the 
knocking, after a short intermission, was renewed. He went to the office 
window and threw up the blind. 

“ Be ’e there, Bill ?” said a voice which he recognized as his brother’s. 
He went out to him at once, finding a strange relief in the prospect of 
friendly companionship. At first he heard his brother’s voice as if from a 
great distance. Dan Trevaskis was in dire trouble, and, all unconscious of 
the wild dismay in which he found his brother, he began to relate his tale. 
On the journey from Melbourne he had met his boy Dick on the way 
thereto — ran against him accidentally at one of the stations at which 
both trains called. He was looking miserably ill, and on being ques- 
tioned he confessed to his father that he had embezzled some money, 
that he had left the bank on ten days’ leave of absence, and meant to 
run away somewhere. His father had brought him back with him ; had 
walked with him from Yarranalla, twelve miles farther off than Nilpeena. 
They had come by an indirect route, so as to meet no one on the way. 

“ I want to hide ’e. Bill. The lad can stay by me at that claim where 
I’m to work alone. Why, what ’ud be the good of ’e trying to run 
away ? I’ll make the money good to the bank ; but I can’t abear to let 
’em ’ave the boy to put in prison. I’d sooner die, by God I would !” 

‘‘ Where is he now ?” said Trevaskis in a dull, heavy voice. 

“ ’E’s restin’ a bit away from here. ... I didn’t like to bring ’e up, 
in case any one might be about with ’e.” 

Gradually, as Trevaskis listened to his brother, a scheme unfolded 
itself, vague at first, but gathering coherence as he thought it over. 

In this youth fleeing from justice, and in his father, eager above all 
things to screen him from the reach of the law, he might find the very 
instrunients needed to free him from the horrible dilemma in which he 
found himself. To send this youth away under the name of Victor Fitz- 
Gibbon would afford him all the time necessary to secure the treasure 
and to see whether Victor recovered. If he did, he could be drugged, 
and left in the wastes around somewhere till he was discovered. Others 
might be suspected, and others might suffer, but at any rate this great 
crisis could be tided over. Only, till the boy was safely despatched, se- 


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259 


crecy would be necessary as to that stricken life now hidden underground. 
If the worst came to the worst — if he died, he could get rid of the re- 
mains in a way that would absolutely defy detection. There was the 
limestone kiln all this week and the next, and, at any time that the man- 
ager would choose to set it going, ready to calcine any matter that was 
cast into its depths. 

A short time before Trevaskis left town he had seen a play in which 
a murderer — a man who had designedly killed another for the sake of 
gain — had disposed of his victim in that manner. 

“This is what people mean when they say the stage has such good 
moral effects,” he thought ; “ it helps them to scheme how to get away 
from a coil of suspicions. No one would believe that I hadn’t killed 
Fitz-Gibbon because he was on the track of the hidden gold. But I 
didn’t ; it was all accidental. Now here’s the way to get out of it all.” 
He felt his courage rising every moment. 

“ What do you think. Bill ? Can’t I keep him with myself all unbe- 
knownst to any one else ?” said Dan, in an imploring voice. 

“ No, Dan, you can’t ; the thing has been tried over and over again, 
and always comes to grief,” answered Trevaskis coldly. And then, in 
the pause that ensued, he keenly noted the despair of the unhappy man, 
who was ready to embrace any scheme to save his boy from the shame 
and open disgrace that threatened him. 

“There’s only one plan that I can see to save him,” said Trevaskis in 
a moody, yet half-indifferent, tone. 

“ What is that. Bill ? Tell me, for God’s sake !” cried Dan. 

There was silence for a moment or two, and then Trevaskis answered, 
in the tones of one who is not supremely interested, 

“There is a young swell here who wants, for some reasons of his own, 
to be quit of his friends for a time without leaving the country. There 
is a wool-ship leaving Port Pellew the day after to-morrow. If any one 
left by that vessel in his name, I believe he would pay handsomely — ” 

“Oh, Bill! Bill! would ’e let my boy go? — but, tell me, has this 
young swell done nothing ’isself ?” cried Dan with breathless eagerness. 

“ Nothing in the world, in the way you mean,” answered Trevaskis, 
still maintaining the cold aspect of a man not committed to one side or 
the othqy. 

“ Would ’e let my lad Dick go in place of ’e ?” 

“ I believe he would, and pay his way,” answered Trevaskis, turning to 
fumble for his pipe and tobacco-pouch. He smoked, as a rule, only at 
night, and kept these on the mantel-piece of his office. He had lit only 
a candle, and he felt somehow safer to be away from his brother’s obser- 
vation while he threw out these baits as if they were half-random sug- 
gestions, unconnected with any vital interests of his own. 


260 


THE SILENT SEA 


‘‘ Then, Bill, for God’s sake let my boy go for him !” cried Dan, stand- 
ing up and placing his hand on Trevaskis’s arm. 

“ Go and call him in,” said Trevaskis curtly. Dan at once hurried out- 
side. Then Trevaskis unlocked the iron safe in his office and took out 
a little leathern bag which held a hundred sovereigns. He had thought 
it safer to keep some gold coin by him, and now his forecasts were 
strangely confirmed. He was fast approaching the old, self-complacent 
standpoint, in which his “ luck ” appeared to him as a definite valuable 
possession, to be calculated and acted upon. With this bag of sovereigns 
in his possession, he went with a lighted candle into the purser’s office. 
There was Victor’s Gladstone bag all ready packed, with his ulster and 
travelling-cap on a chair by the sofa on which he had thrown himself 
down under his travelling-rug. He unlocked the drawer of the desk at 
which Victor habitually worked, and found the large envelope, enclosing 
the safe-key, addressed in his bold running hand : 

Captain Trevaskis^ 

Colmar Mine. 

The envelope had been so hurriedly closed that by slipping in the 
point of his penknife the paper yielded under a little pressure without 
the least tear. 

Trevaskis refiected that some one might call by arrangement to waken 
the purser before four. He therefore threw the window wide open, 
poured water into the wash-hand basin, which stood in an iron frame 
near it, washed his hands, and threw the wetted towel carelessly on the 
edge of the stand, and then fiung various articles about on the bunk, giv- 
ing the place that air of disorder which a room wears when one leaves it 
hurriedly. Then he gathered up Victor’s effects and took them to his 
own room. There the father and son awaited him. 

Trevaskis wasted no time in preambles of any kind. 

“ I’m going to help you out of this mess you’ve got into, Dick ; but 
mind, you have to keep your wits about you. You’ll get out of the train 
at Oswald township, and change into the one for Port Pellew at mid-day. 
You’ll get into the port at seven in the evening, and put up at the Kan- 
garoo Inn. It’s about the middle of the township, facing the jetty, and 
the nearest inn to the station. Here’s a note-book and pencil ; j^st enter 
these directions. . . . Yes — well — there are two wool-ships advertised to 
sail on Saturday, early in the day. Go by the first one that sails. Now, 
mark me, your line is to leave evidence which will lead people to believe 
you are one Victor Fitz-Gibbon, but you are not to go in his name. Dan, 
what name had this unfortunate boy better go under ? W. T. had better 
be the initials, because he’ll have to take a stock of my things. William 
Thompson — that will do — that will do.” 


^HE SILENT SEA 


^6i 


“ And ’ow^s ’e to give out that ’e’s Fitz-Gibbon, Bill ? Is ’e to make 
any statement?” said Dan, who was quivering with excitement as he 
listened. 

Nothing of the sort,” answered Trevaskis. In the first place, he’s 
to post me this letter the first thing.” He produced the envelope Victor 
had addressed, and into it he put two or three folded oflScial documents 
that he took off his own table — papers of the kind that might have been 
casually in the purser’s possession. 

“ See, I’ll put a stamp on it, and it will be all ready for posting, and 
mind you post it the very first thing before you go to the inn. Then, 
in your bedroom, be careful to forget this little packet — look, there are 
three letters, all addressed ‘ Victor Fitz-Gibbon, Colmar Mine, Colmar,’ 
as well as a couple of his visiting-cards. Go into your room the last 
thing before starting, and put these into a drawer in the toilet-table or 
some such place. Your name won’t appear at all ; they don’t treat these 
ships like passenger vessels. You’ll pay the captain for your passage. 
You’ll go first-class, and directly you laud in London go to the post- 
oflSce; there will be letters awaiting you there, and I’ll make arrange- 
ments with a friend in the City to give you some work in an office till 
we can see our way to your coming back. Here’s a hundred sovereigns 
for you.” 

Trevaskis, as he spoke, emptied the little leathern bag on the table, 
and the money fell in a glittering shower. 

“ Oh, uncle, that is too much ! You are too good to me,” said Dick, 
penetrated with the thought of his kinsman’s disinterested generosity. 

He was a tall, loose-jointed youth, with pale eyes and rather a foolish 
mouth ; but there were as yet no vicious lines in his face, and the sight 
of his father’s silent misery pierced him to the heart. 

Trevaskis filled one of his largest portmanteaus with clothes and linen. 
As the preparations drew to a close, poor Dan began to feel certain mis- 
givings. 

“ Oh, Bill ! don’t ’e think if ’e spoke for my lad to the directors and 
managers they’d look over this? I’d be more nor willin’ to make up the 
money. ’Twas only fifty pound, all told,” he said, speaking to Trevaskis 
in a low voice. 

“ Just enough to get him four years in the stockade, and put the stain 
of a convict on him for life,” answered Trevaskis, closing the portman- 
teau with a sharp click. “ As for my speaking to any one on his behalf, 
if I was a wealthy member of Parliament, and all the rest of it, I might 
do some good; as it is, I should only give them the clue where to send 
the police for him.” 

Dan shrank back as if he were struck, and offered no further resist- 
ance. At three all was ready. 


262 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ You had better walk down with your portmanteau, and wait a little 
beyond Scroog’s inn till the coach starts,” said Trevaskis, turning to his 
nephew. But the father in Dan rose tyrannously. 

“ Just ’alf a minute for myself and the lad. Bill !” he said in a trem- 
ulous voice, and then he stepped outside with his son. The night was 
very sultry, the sky heavily overcast with clouds. There was a high, hot 
wind, dense with dust. 

Dick, my boy, you’re going far from me. I want to say a few words 
to you, but I’m whizzy like.” 

Dan stopped abruptly. He made an effort to go on, but the words 
ended in short, stifled sobs. There was so much he would like to have 
said, now that the moment of parting had come, and he thought bitterly 
that to send his son away to the far ends of the earth, with a lie in his 
mouth as it were, was not a hopeful antidote for the evil courses into 
which he had fallen. But probably no form of set words or remon- 
strances could have reached the heart and conscience of the lad as did 
the sound of his father’s broken voice. 

‘‘ I oft to have set you a better ensample, I know,” he went on, when 
he could make his voice audible. 

“Oh, father, don’t say that; you’ve always been too good to me!” 
cried Dick, his own voice shattered and full of tears. “You kept me 
long at school, and got me a good, easy billet, and now I’ve given you 
nothing but trouble.” 

“ If you was only a little youngster once more, Dick, and I could keep 
you 1 but to be going from me like this, it takes the ’eart out o’ me.” 

Dan looked round, as if with some wild and sudden thought of escape. 
The silent and desolate salt-bush plains did not seem to him as forbid- 
ding as the wide, cruel world beyond, to which his boy was fleeing in 
disgrace. 

“ But if I kep’ you they would tear you from me, and make a jail- 
bird of you. Oh, Dick! will you come to that after all? Oh, I’m 
afeerd, I’m afeerd — ” 

“ No, father, no ! I promise you on my knees !” cried the lad in an 
agony of remorse and grief, kneeling down where he stood. 

“ Say your prayers to me, Dick, as you used to when you was a little 
chap,” whispered the father. 

When they re-entered Trevaskis’s office it was half-past three. He 
had some tea and bread and butter ready, and Dick did his best to eat 
and drink ; but it was rather a melancholy failure. The flrst gleams of 
daylight were struggling through the warm, dust-laden air as he went on 
his way. Half an hour later the coach started from Scroog’s inn, amid 
a lusty chorus. Several of the passengers were lucky diggers, who had 
spent the night in drinking and gambling. The refrain. 


TflE SILENT sea 


263 


“We won’t go home till morning, 

Till daylight does appear,” 

fell on Dan’s ears with a mocking hilarity as he watched the trap whirl- 
ing away, with Dick wedged in between two other passengers on the 
back seat. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

It would be hard to say which of the two men who watched Circus 
Bill’s trap disappear in a great cloud of red dust felt most perplexed 
and miserable. 

“ I wish to Gord I ’ad a-took ’e back to the boss o’ the bank, sooner 
than let ’e slide like this,” said Dan slowly, his massive face quivering, 
his eyes dim and bloodshot. 

Trevaskis made no reply. In the calm dawn of day the conviction 
grew on him that his action in hiding Victor in the cave room was a 
plan so dangerous that it could have originated only in an intoxicated 
brain ; but now the die was cast, and so far chance had favored him. 
All the passengers except Dick were people from the diggings, and the 
driver who had taken Bill’s place was a stranger to the mine. 

He pondered how and when he should reveal the real situation to 
Dan. Suppose Fitz-Gibbon should die? Trevaskis felt the possibility 
had to be faced, and he decided that in such an event he must have no 
confidant. He decided, too, that in any case it would be best to let his 
brother remain in ignorance till Dick was beyond recall. 

“You’re low and miserable, Dan, and I don’t wonder at it,” he said 
kindly, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “ Come in, old man, 
and have a good stiff nobbier or two of brandy, and go to bed. I’ll make 
one up for you in the room off my office ; I’ve had it cleared out on 
purpose. But perhaps you’d better not go to bed for an hour or two. 
Hang about and show yourself when the night-corps comes up, and the 
morning one goes down ; we don’t want to give any one the chance of 
saying you’re hiding here.” 

“You’re right there. Bill,” answered Dan; “I’ll go across to the 
ingin-room and ’ave a pitch wi’ ’Zilla. . . . And, Bill, do ’e not leave 
the grog about. . . . Thee know’st ’tis not pors’ble for me to ’ave just 
one nip and be ended . . . and I want to keep feer sober and daicent, 
and say a word or two to the Lord for my boy, night and day. ’E may 
turn a deef ear, but I’ll just give ’e a chance to ’ear me.” 

But Trevaskis had no thought of furthering those good intentions. 
He prepared a bed for Dan in the empty room between his own office 


264 


THE SILENT SEA 


and the ironmongery store, locking the door that led into the latter. On 
a box beside the bed he put a tin of biscuits, a jug of water, a tumbler, 
and a freshly opened bottle of brandy. On the evening of the next day 
this was empty, and Trevaskis filled it once more with the same liquor. 
It was late on Monday before Dan recovered his senses, sick and sorry, 
and ashamed and miserable, to the last degree. 

In these four days Trevaskis felt as if he had lived as many years. 
During the first day every succeeding hour seemed to deepen his de- 
spairing hopelessness, his impotent rage at his own imbecility. If he 
had only left Victor lying senseless with the keys in the safe ! But his 
brain had been paralyzed. At first, the plan of making it appear that 
Victor had taken ship from Port Pellew had seemed a godsend ; now he 
perceived quicksands on every side, and felt that each step he took to 
avoid suspicion and inquiry might eventually become a strong link in a 
chain of damning evidence. 

At the end of forty-eight hours Victor showed signs of returning 
consciousness. After that, when Trevaskis attended him, he wore the 
wig and long gray beard which transformed him into an old man. To 
insure himself still more against recognition, he also wore the smoke- 
colored sun-glasses. On Monday morning, after giving Victor an egg 
beaten up with water and sugar, Trevaskis noticed him looking round, 
and trying to raise one of his hands. If he were well attended to, he 
might be himself again in a few days. As this accident had taken place 
without any design on his part, might it not be better to leave the young 
man alone for a day or two ? This would at least retard his recovery. 

As Trevaskis pondered the question, he went out through his oflSce door 
and walked round the mine. Stone dead hath no fellow.” The words 
seemed to resound in his ears, to be hissed at him by everything he 
passed. Could he — would he do it ? In imagination, he followed him- 
self, on a dark night, with a strange burden to the edge of the lime-kiln 
pit, with its lurid fiames leaping high. . c . Was this what he was 
coming to hour by hour and step by step? 

No, no, no ! never ! never !” he cried, starting back as if from an 
obstructing barrier. He returned to his oflSce. On the table lay the 
mail, as it had been delivered to him, untouched. Now, on turning over 
the papers and letters, he found two from Port Pellew. One was for 
Dan. He opened it and read the following lines : 

“ Dear Father, — Don’t be uneasy about me. I’ll never, never forget what you 
and uncle have done for me. I’m sailing by the Arcadia in an hour. I’ve done 
everything uncle arranged. Father, I’ll never forget my promise to you. 

“ Dick.” 

The look of the other envelope, addressed in Victor’s bold, careless 
handwriting, with the Port Pellew post-mark and date, sharp and clear, 


THE SILENT SEA 


265 


revived Trevaskis’s courage in a wonderful way. He instantly wrote a 
few lines to Mr. Drummond, expressing a little surprise that Mr. Fitz- 
Gibbon bad gone to Port Pellew without mentioning bis change of 
plan. At least be (Trevaskis) inferred be bad gone there, from the 
receipt of the enclosed envelope, which merely contained a few official 
documents. He had intrusted some commissions to Mr. Fitz-Gibbon 
which needed prompt attention, and he would be glad therefore to know 
whether he had yet reached town. In order to save time, he was mak- 
ing inquiries at Port Pellew by the same post. 

Then he wrote to the landlord of the Kangaroo Inn, asking whether 
a Mr. Victor Fitz-Gibbon had put up at his hotel on Friday last, and 
if so, whether he was still there. 

After that he felt reassured, till on going to see Victor again near 
sunset. 

He found him murmuring some words over and over. He listened 
intently, and heard him say, 

‘‘ Have you my letter, Helen ? Helen, have you my letter 

Helen? Was it, then, possible that the young man’s abrupt change 
of plan was due to some woman, and had nothing to do with the ques- 
tion of searching for gold ? Here Trevaskis saw himself threatened with 
a hitherto unsuspected danger. He knew that Victor’s mother was on 
the other side of the world, and that he had no sister. An uncle’s 
anxiety might be easily satisfied; a brother would in all probability 
calmly accept the first version furnished by circumstantial evidence; 
other friends would smile and suspect the young man had some good 
reason for secretly setting off on a long voyage. . . . But a woman — 
one who perhaps loved him ? Each circumstance that served to satisfy 
others might in her estimation be a ground for added suspicion. 

“ Helen, have you my letter ?” 

Trevaskis listened again with labored breath, and a dull, heavy beating 
in his temples. 

After a short time Victor fell fast asleep. Trevaskis, devoured with 
fresh terrors, went to the purser’s office, with the purpose of searching 
for some clue to this new complication. In the table drawer he found 
the letter which Victor had begun to write to Miss Paget : 

“ Dear Helen, — When, at the close of our voyage in the Moguls I asked that our 
friendship might have a firmer basis, and you laughingly suggested that the sea 
breezes had got into my head, I thought you were laying too much stress on the 
difference in our ages ; and when, a few days after landing, I asked you to become 
my wife, I thought you were a little hard-hearted in stipulating for a period of 
probation, so that the strength of my affection might be tested. But now I find 
that you were wise. For though my esteem for you is and always will remain 
unaltered — ” 


^66 


THE SILENT SEA 


That was all. The letter broke off abruptly. But, after reading this 
fragment, Trevaskis opened Victor’s desk, and read one by one the 
letters which he had received from Miss Paget since coming to the mine. 
Then the telegram from King George’s Sound completed the record. 
Trevaskis locked the unfinished letter where he had found it with a 
lightened mind. If this young lady were harder to satisfy than Victor’s 
other friends as to his hurried departure, this half-sheet of writing would 
probably prove very useful. 

It was after sunset when Dan, haggard and miserable, with throbbing 
temples and confused faculties, staggered out of the room in which he 
had been lying, most of the time unconscious, since Friday afternoon. 

Trevaskis met him with a hot, strong cup of what he called ‘‘coffee 
royal,” which Dan took and gulped down in silence. 

“ Here’s a letter from Dick,” said the younger brother after a pause. 

Dan read the few lines, and his shaking hands grew more tremulous. 

“ Thank Gord ’e’s got safe away !” he murmured. “ But what’s the 
use o’ me taking Gord’s name in vain ? . . . I’m worse than the brute 
beasts that perish !” he added with bitter emphasis. 

“You’ll be better after this, Dan,” said Trevaskis, who, now that the 
moment for making his revelation had come, felt as if all capacity of 
emotion had been left far behind. He was conscious only of a cold 
curiosity as to how this hiding of an injured man underground would 
strike his brother. 

“ Yes, I’ll be better,” repeated Dan slowly. Then, after a pause, “ If 
I could only resist the devil. You meant it for the best. Bill ; but I’d 
give anything I ’adn’t ’ad this burst of drink. It’s more ’n a year that 
I didn’t give way till I went back to Bendigo, and now there’s all that 
time to make up. For a few months at a time I don’t feel no satersfac- 
tion for keeping from the drink, for I allays says to myself, ‘ You’ve 
gone this length before, old boy, but you was overcome at the end.’ 
There’s some people as says there ain’t no devil but what’s in our own 
insides. But when a man finds ’isself doin’ something as drags him 
down and down, and makes ’im bad in body and soul, ’ow are you to 
give a haccount of it but through the devil ?” 

Dan was not skilful in dialectics, but probably the most subtle meta- 
physician could not better define that tragic contest which is constantly 
going on in human life between conscience and appetite, with such 
varying and infinitely disastrous results. 

“ I don’t know ! Sometimes to forget everything that’s ever hap- 
pened or can come to you is the best you can do,” returned Trevaskis 
sombrely. 

“ Well, I’m thankful. Bill, that though you’ve your hups and downs in 
money, you don’t know nothing of that sort of misfortune,” said Dan. 


THE SILENT SEA 


267 


Trevaskis looked hard into his brother’s face without speaking. 

Leastaways, I ’opes not, Bill. But you look very bad — is anything 
the matter?” 

Just come with me for a bit,” said Trevaskis, and in silence the two 
men walked down through the narrow iron passage till they came to 
the entrance of the cave room. Here Trevaskis lit a shaded kerosene 
lamp, and went to the recess on the right-hand side of the room, in 
which Victor was lying. 

When Dan caught sight of the still, stretched form and white face, he 
gave one of those sudden, violent starts which may often be seen on the 
stage, and occasionally in real life. As for Trevaskis, he stood holding 
the lamp in his right hand, and staring straight before him, till his 
brother’s hoarse, terror-stricken whisper broke the silence. 

‘‘ O Lord in heaven. Bill, what is this? You didn’t do it, you 
didn’t ! Tell me you didn’t strike ’e down, and that ’e ain’t a-dying !” 

The horror of Dan’s voice and face and action gave a curious stimulus 
to Trevaskis’s imagination. 

“ No, Dan, I didn’t do it, not wilfully. I’m as innocent in the mat- 
ter as the babe unborn ; only who would believe that ? I’ll tell you how 
it was in a few words. I found the buried gold I told you about, partly 
smelted, partly amalgam. I put it here for safety till you should come 
and cart it to the broken-down whim. This young man, who was purser 
at the mine, must have taken it into his head to come prowling about 
the night before he was to go on a journey. It was after midnight on 
Friday night. I was here, stooping over the gold, with only a candle 
stuck in a bottle — the one you see broken there. All at once some one 
rushes at me, catching me round the throat. I closed with him and 
flung him down in the dark, for the bottle with the candle was thrown 
down before I could turn round. When I lit it again I found it was 
Fitz-Gibbon, badly hurt.” 

“ Was it in place of ’e my boy went away ?” asked Dan in a choking 
voice. 

“ Yes, I found out Fitz-Gibbon somehow had reasons of his own for 
clearing out of the colony for a bit,” answered Trevaskis, plunging 
deeper into falsifications than he had any intention of doing when he 
began his garbled story. “ Then, as I was in the thick of it all, wonder- 
ing what I was to do, you and Dick came along. ... I was stupid to 
go so far for the sake of your boy ; but it was in my head, like the beat 
of a hammer, how our name would be all over the country as criminals — 
your boy for theft ; me for a murderous assault. But it will be all right 
yet, Dan ; only let us stick by each other like men. I’ve written to the 
manager of the bank, enclosing a check for the full amount of Dan’s 
stealings.” 


268 


THE SILENT SEA 

“ Don’t, Bill, don’t call it by that name ; it go to my heart, it do,’^ 
said Dan, in a smothered voice. 

Ultimately he fell in with all his brother’s proposals. He consented 
to nurse Victor until he was sufficiently recovered to be conveyed by 
night, and left where he would be speedily found, either near Broom- 
bush Creek or Hooper’s Luck. He fed and tended him day and night, 
sleeping on a shake-down near him. At the end of five days the 
drowsy stupor in which Victor lay the greater part of the time began to 
pass away ; he was still delirious, but now and then he looked around 
and asked lucid questions. 

When this improvement took place, Trevaskis thought it advisable to 
keep his faculties clouded till he should be strong enough to be moved ; 
he therefore measured doses of laudanum from time to time out of the 
bottle he had found among Dunning’s effects, and these doses Dan ad- 
ministered, knowing nothing of the nature of the drug. Its effects were 
varied. At times Victor became feverish and wildly delirious ; at others 
he lay completely stupefied. At last Dan’s suspicions were aroused. 
On the tenth night following the Monday on which he had taken charge, 
he slept very soundly. It was after six on Friday morning when he 
awoke; he found Victor lying awake, and talking at intervals, more 
calmly than he had done for days back. 

“ Have you any letters for me ?” he asked, as Dan was busy warming 
some preserved cBicken-broth over the spirit-lamp which he had for such 
purposes. 

It should be here noted that Trevaskis had telegraphed to one of the 
grocers in town for a complete store of invalid requisites, and these had 
speedily arrived by the mail-coach from Nilpeena. 

“ I don’t think there’s any letters to-day ; perhaps we may get some 
to-morrow. . . . But just now take this mug of broth, with a crumb of 
bread in it,” said Dan soothingly. 

He helped Victor into a sitting position, propped him up with some 
pillows, and fed him. 

“ You are very good to me. . . . Have I seen you much before this ?” 
asked Victor, in a puzzled tone ; and then he began to look around him, 
into the dim slopes and irregularities of the place, in the midst of which 
the solitary kerosene lamp made but a faint island of light. 

In half an hour after he had taken food Dan gave his patient the 
dose of medicine that had been, as usual, mixed by Trevaskis on the 
previous night. In a quarter of an hour Victor sank into a state of 
stupor. When he woke up his talk was wildly incoherent. 

After dark the manager came in with a brisk, cheerful air. From the 
hour that he was relieved from attendance on his victim he had gained 
in health of mind and body. On the Monday night, when Dan took 


THE SILENT SEA 


269 


charge, Trevaskis had gone to bed at nine o’clock, and slept without a 
break till seven next morning. By Wednesday’s mail he received two 
letters — one was from Victor’s uncle, the other from the landlord of the 
Kangaroo Inn at Port Pellew. 

Mr. Drummond was surprised at his nephew’s sudden change of plan, 
but felt no alarm. He knew nothing of his proposed journey to town, 
and could only suppose that some circumstance, of which he was as yet 
ignorant, had caused Mr. Fitz-Gibbon to go to Port Pellew instead. He 
asked the manager to lose no time in communicating any further par- 
ticulars that might come to his knowledge regarding the matter. 

This Trevaskis was able to do to good effect. By that day’s return 
mail he forwarded the note received from the landlord at Port Pellew, 
enclosing the visiting-cards and the envelopes addressed to Mr. V. Fitz- 
Gibbon which had been found in a drawer of the room occupied by that 
gentleman at the Kangaroo Inn, on the previous Friday night. On the 
next morning, Saturday, he had taken passage by one of the sailing ves- 
sels which had left Port Pellew that day. In reply to this letter, one 
came from Mr. Drummond on Saturday, thanking Trevaskis for the 
trouble he had taken in the matter, saying that no letters had been re- 
ceived from Mr. Fitz-Gibbon prior to his departure, and that his brother 
had suggested Victor must have written some letters which had gone 
astray, and inquiries were accordingly being made at the Pellew post- 
office. Then, with this an official letter had come from the secretary of 
the company, relative to the appointment of a new purser at the Colmar. 
No word was written as to working or searching the cave room for gold, 
so it was evident that no importance had been attached to the matter, 
apart from Fitz-Gibbon’s whim. 

And now Trevaskis saw himself successful all along the line. Day by 
day the gold which he had first stolen and invested in mining shares 
was increasing. He was constantly studying the share-list, and tele- 
graphing some fresh instructions to his broker. Almost every fresh 
sale, and each new investment, added to his wealth. What could he 
not do with the command of £20,000 in ready money ? The longer he 
dwelt on the dazzling prospects before him, the more blind he became 
to the miserable fears which beset Dan in his strange and uncongenial 
task. 

“ Why, Dan, you are a first-rate nurse,” he said in high good-humor, 
as he came into the cave room on this Friday evening. ‘‘ I think you’d 
better take a turn in the open air, and I’ll sit by your patient till you 
come back,” he added, either not seeing or ignoring the fixed, question- 
ing look with which his brother regarded him. 

“ I don’t much care to go out. Bill,” answered Dan slowly. Hany 
one as meets me looks at me in a curious way, as much as to say, ‘ This 


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is the bloke as is down with fever.’ The larst time I went out I met 
’Zilla— ” 

What the devil does it matter who you meet ?” answered Trevaskis 
roughly. ‘‘ You’d better have a mouthful of fresh air, for on Saturday 
I shall be busy all day, and in the evening I may have to ride across to 
Nilpeena, and not be back till late Sunday. He sleeps well, don’t he ?” 
he added, glancing carelessly at Victor. 

I think he sleeps too well. Bill. This mornin’ he was nearly ’imself, 
lookin’ at me and speakin’ quite clear-like — ” 

“ And then after his medicine he wasn’t quite so clear in the head,” 
put in Trevaskis, who thought it, on the whole, more prudent at this 
juncture to let his brother know the real state of affairs. 

Dan nodded, looking at his brother with gloomy suspicion. 

“ Don’t you see,” said Trevaskis, that if he’s to be kept here another 
two weeks or so — ” 

‘‘ Two weeks !” cried Dan, starting to his feet. ‘‘ Ah, you’re druggin’ 
’e — you’re druggin’ ’e ! You want to make ’e whizzy and gone in the 
mind. ... I won’t do it. ... I won’t. I’ll nurse ’e right or not at all.” 

A tempestuous scene followed between the two. It ended in Tre- 
vaskis consenting to have Victor removed from the mine in five days 
from that time. After receiving this assurance, Dan went out into the 
fresh air. He walked towards Broombush Creek, and was away for two 
hours. During his absence Victor woke up and called Trevaskis by 
name several times. In his terror Trevaskis gave him a larger dose of 
laudanum than he meant to administer. All that night, and till late in 
the afternoon of the next day, Victor lay in a torpid state, Dan sleeping 
and watching beside him, waking up now and then from miserable 
dreams, in which he was constantly occupied in carrying a corpse, and 
vainly seeking some spot in which it might be hidden. He became at 
last wild with the horror of it all. The rigid form and white, set face 
of the young man, the loneliness, the silence, the underground gloom, 
broken only by the feeble light of a lamp, drove him to desperation. 

At last, within an hour of sunset, he made a sudden resolve to take 
Victor into Trevaskis’s room, where he could have light and fresh air. 
He cleaned the invalid-chair that was lying among the lumber of the 
cave room. One of the wheels was off, but he replaced it, and speedily 
improvised a linch-pin out of an old wire nail. Then he placed Victor 
in the chair, with a pillow under his head and a rug folded round him, 
and wheeled him slowly through the passage up to the offices. 

“ I don’t care what Bill says to this,” he thought. “ The boy is 
dwinin’ away for fresh air and light, and I won’t sit by and see ’e die. 
Oh, A’mighty Gord, if everything is in your hands, give me a lift just 
now,” he said, pausing when close to the offices, near one of the little 


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square windows that lit the iron passage, and gazing with affrighted eyes 
at Victor’s livid face. To Dan’s distempered brain it seemed as if the 
young man’s breathing had entirely ceased. He knelt by him, feeling 
his pulses with rough, tremulous fingers. Presently his growing terror 
was relieved by hearing Victor give a long, low sigh. At the same 
instant a dog sprang up outside against the four small panes of glass, 
with short, joyous barks of recognition. A clear, sweet voice called out 
“ Spot, Spot !” but the dog did not move. And then, as Dan was in the 
act of beginning to wheel the chair once more, he suddenly caught sight 
of a beautiful young girl looking in at the window. He reached it with 
one leap, and tore down the dark-green blind which was fastened above 
the panes of glass. In less than sixty seconds he had gained Trevaskis’s 
bedroom and lifted Victor on to the bed. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

Solomon Olsen’s general store was a great resort for the miners’ 
wives on Saturday afternoons. On these occasions the weekly bills were 
paid, and supplies for the coming week were bought. Those who had 
young babies nourished them with frank unreserve, sitting by the coun- 
ters on each side of the store, and giving their orders after a very leisurely 
fashion. They filled up the pauses between their purchases with such 
gossip as the Colmar Mine afforded them, after they had exhausted the 
more engrossing events of a domestic nature. 

“ And did you hear that Jack Teague was sent to the right-about be- 
cause ’e missed two shifts through illness ?” one would say. “ Yes, when 
’e went back at ’leven at night, the cap’en said to ’e, ‘ ’Ump your bluey 
and clear.’ But ’tis not so easy clearin’, I think, wi’ a wife and mother- 
in-law and three youngsters.” 

“The manager be getten’ more and more onreasonable,” another 
would respond. “ There’s my boy Jan, as hard-workin’ a chap as ye’ll find. 
And the cap’en ’e come along t’other day. ‘Jan,’ sez ’e, ‘thee beest a 
pretty man for an ’ammer. Thee beat’st just like a thing. Can’t ’e 
thump better ’n that?’ ” and so forth. 

On this special Saturday afternoon, however, the great theme was the 
conduct of Dr. Magann, the mine-doctor, as he was generally called, 
being, in point of fact, almost entirely supported by the miners, who, 
since he settled at Colmar, were pledged to pay him so much weekly 
out of their wages. A few days previously a woman had been taken 
suddenly ill, but the doctor, when sent for, was found to be too unwell 


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to leave his bed. So the patient had died “ without the help of no 
doctor,” as the people phrased it. 

Mind you, I don’t say as he’d do she a mossel o’ good,” one voluble 
woman explained. “ But it don’t seem right to ’ave a post-mortor affair 
on a decent female in ’er own ’ouse, as if she was a unbeknown tramp, 
as died through the wisitation o’ Gord A’mighty through bein’ drunk 
four week on end.” 

“ And what is this deep-larned complaint the doctor said at th’ ink- 
west she died of ?” said another, who had opened the weekly paper she 
had called for at the post on her way to the store. 

Hanererism,” said a neighbor, peeping over her shoulder. “ Who’d 
a-thought that ’ad anything to do with the ’eart? It’s just wonderful 
’ow them doctors finds things out, and calls ’em by names as nobody 
would think of.” 

“ Indeed, as for that, Mrs. Penlevin,” said the woman who held the 
newspaper, “ I thenk they inwents diseases, the same as they does pills. 
It don’t seem reasonable as they can tell so many things from another 
as goes on quite inside o’ folkses.” 

“ Well, but that’s why they cut open frogs and corpses, Mrs. Piersen, 
so as to find out the proper nateral name o’ hillnesses,” returned Mrs. 
Penlevin slowly. 

Indeed, then, I can’t believe as ’ow the karkiss o’ a toad, be it iver 
so wise as some people says, can learn them so much about the inside o’ 
a Christian,” said another sceptic. ‘‘An’ if we’re to be cut hopen, and 
put in the papers for dyin’ peaceable to ’ome, I don’t see much good in 
paying for a doctor. Why, Miss Lindsay, as comes about to us, does 
three times more good, wi’ ’er fiowers an’ jellies an’ sweet looks.” 

“ Oh, she’s a hanjull, she is, and no mistake !” said a dark-faced little 
woman, who was nursing a two-months-old baby near the open door. 
“ And there she is a-comin’ at this moment,” she added, looking out. 

Doris had alighted from the pony-chaise and given the reins to 
Shung-Loo. When she came into the store she stood speaking to one 
and all of the women assembled there. Mr. Olsen was at one counter, 
his wife at the other. Solomon Olsen was a large, thick-set man, with 
a swarthy complexion, a big hooked nose, black hair and whiskers, a re- 
treating forehead, and restless black eyes swimming in fat. He had a 
loud, voluble utterance and an invincible self-assurance. He looked as if 
his whole heart and soul were perpetually engrossed in small, mean plots 
for making more money than he ought out of his fellow-creatures. Yet, 
on entering the little sitting-room behind the store, the first object that 
caught the eye was a faded picture on a parchment, hanging on the 
eastern wall. Above this was inscribed, in half-erased Hebrew char- 
acters, the words, “ From this side blows the breath of life.” It was a 


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picture of Jerusalem, that wonderful, old, ruined city, which has so long 
lain desolate in the sight of “ all that passed by,’’ and yet towards which, 
through the long ages, so many wistful eyes are turned from far-sepa- 
rated and alien lands in prayer, and at the hour of death, looking for 
the fulfilment of the words that were traced under this picture, also in 
Hebrew, ‘‘Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know 
that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that that was deso- 
late ; I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.” 

It was opposite this curious old-world picture, with its mystical inscrip- 
tions, that Doris waited for Mrs. West, who was making a very slow re- 
covery from the nervous illness which had followed the shock of her 
husband’s terrible death and the total destruction of her home and all 
that it contained. 

Doris had been to see her several times previously. The last occasion 
was five days before this, and Mrs. West had then expressed a great wish 
to accept her brother’s invitation to stay with him for some time at the 
Half-way House, the inn which he had opened midway between Colmar and 
Broombush Creek. But the passenger-van was always so crowded with 
rowdy men, and she and Dick were so weak and easily shaken, that she 
could not yet undertake the journey. Poor little Dick had an attack of 
low fever hanging about him, which did not lay him up quite, but grew 
worse and better from day to day with lingering tediousness. 

“He’s laying down just now, and don’t seem quite hisself, poor little 
man !” his mother said, as she came into the sitting-room. “ He keeps 
on talkin’ o’ the fire, and the smoke being in ’is heyes. I’m most sure, 
if I could get him away, the change ’ud do ’im good.” 

“ That is partly why I came to-day,” said Doris. “ I know of a good 
way to get you over to your brother’s. An old friend of ours, Mr. Ken- 
neth Campbell — ” 

“ The old man as sells awful religious books, and carries on so about 
people’s souls and the Sabbarth day, is it, Miss Lindsay ?” said Mrs. West, 
with a slight accent of alarm. 

“Yes, he sells books, and often gives them away,” answered Doris, 
who hardly recognized Kenneth under this description. “ The day be- 
fore yesterday he took poor Mick Doolan, and another man who had 
been very ill of fever, across to the hospital at Broombush Creek. He 
has a nice, roomy wagon, covered in, and when I told him about you 
and little Dick, he said at once he would take you to your brother’s.” 

“ I know ’e’s very good and kind like, and always ready to do things 
for everybody as is in trouble ; but it just seems to me as if I couldn’t 
bear the thought of being spoke to about my soul, and what’s to become 
o’ me in the other world. Miss Lindsay,” said the woman tearfully. 
“You see, I’m so hard put to just now in this one, and it’s so dismal 
18 


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about pore West, for if it’s all true ole Campbell says, my pore man ’ud 
’ave a bad time of it altogether, for I know he wasn’t very sober. But 
I do think as the Lord ’ud take into account ’is bein’ burned to death, and 
not go on at ’im with the same like — ” 

‘‘Oh, don’t think about such dreadful things, please don’t,” said 
Doris in a pained voice. As she had never been taught anything regard- 
ing eternal torment, and had read very little on the subject, she had but 
a vague comprehension of Mrs. West’s meaning. “ Poor, dear Kenneth 
would never think of talking in a way that would worry you. He is 
ready to take you to-morrow afternoon.” 

“An’ bein’ Sunday, too. Oh, Miss Lindsay, ’e could never keep ’is 
tongue off o’ me.” 

“ Well, I will come with you ; you’ll see that poor old Kenneth is just 
the soul of kindness,” said Doris, half laughing and half vexed. 

Mrs. West’s face brightened at once. 

“Oh, if you come, Miss Lindsay — but isn’t it a deal too much, a 
young lady like you to come in that wagon, and all for me? Poor 
little Dick ’ull be that pleased ; but it’s just too much trouble.” 

“ It’s no trouble at all. I thought of taking you over in my pony- 
trap before, but Mrs. Challoner did not like me to go with only Chung 
to take care of me — the working-men are so rude to the Chinese — and 
I want you and Dick to be safe away before we leave. Yes, we are to 
go a day or two after Christmas. Mr. Challoner is well enough to travel. 
The change to a cooler climate will do him good, and he wants to see 
his brother before he sails.” 

Mrs. West was incoherently voluble as to the sorrow that would be felt 
at Doris’s departure, and, indeed, at that of all the Stonehouse household. 
Then, as Doris rose to go, she said with sudden animation, 

“There, now, I was as near as could be to forgettin’ agin to ast you 
about Mr. Fitz-Gibbon. I’ve heerd so many rummers. Is it true. Miss 
Lindsay, as he went right off in a wool or wheat ship to England or the 
Cape ?” 

At the mention of Victor’s name a quick tinge of color mounted in 
Doris’s face; but there was no perceptible change in her voice as she 
answered, 

“ Yes, it seems he sailed from Port Pellew two weeks ago to-day.” 

“ And never said nothin’ to nobody about it ?” 

“ He spoke about the ships at Port Pellew to the manager the day be- 
fore he left ; but we think he could not have known then, and that it 
may have been some sudden message he got on the way.” 

“ Well, it may seem conceited, but I can’t believe some’ow as he 
meant to go like that, when he started without saying a word to me. I 
don’t know as you knew him much. Miss Lindsay. He was boardin’ at 


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the Arms with us till we was burned out; and, of course, you know as 
he saved poor little Dick from the flames. A nicer, kinder-’earted young 
gentleman never lived. Not a day after the accident but he come in to 
see me and Dick. Last Wednesday was a fortnight the last time he 
come. ‘ I’m going to town for a few days,’ sez he. ‘ Can I do any- 
thing for you, Mrs. West?’ he says; and then he turns to Dick, and 
Dick climbs up on ’is knees. Blesh you, ma’am, that little chap was 
friendlier with him the first day he come to the Arms than ever he got to 
be with ’is own poor par, who ’adn’t what you might call a sweet temper 
at no time. And we was out of a cook, and the way he would put up 
with everything, and smile and be as pleased ! . . . ‘ Well, Dick,’ he 
says that Wednesday, ‘ what shall I bring you from town ?’ ‘ A little 

cock to crow in the morning,’ says Dick ; and then Mr. Fitz-Gibbon says, 
‘Is there jam on your fingers, Dick? No, there isn’t; nor butter, nor 
treacle. You’re a wonderful young man this afternoon. Now, here’s a 
little letter for you ; hold it tight in your hand so, and don’t open it 
till I’m gone, and give it to your ma to take care on.’ I just thought it 
was his pleasant way to amuse the child, but what do you think it was. 
Miss Lindsay ?” 

Miss Lindsay admitted her inability to guess, but she was listening 
with a look of vivid pleasure. 

“ Well, it was a five-pound note inside o’ a little henvelope. No, I’m sure 
he never knowed he was going that there journey, and why should he? 
I don’t know whether it’s on account o’ hillness and bein’ nervis through 
misfortunes. Miss Lindsay, but several nights since I hear this tale I’ve 
lay awake hours and hours, wonderin’ if nothin’ hasn’t gone amiss, or if 
it isn’t one o’ them strange things as ’appens sometimes.” Mrs. West’s 
voice sank mysteriously as she said this. 

“ I think it is perhaps because you are feeling ill,” said Doris, after a 
little pause. “ What we think is, that he got a message from some one 
at Nilpeena ; that he was wanted at the Cape of Good Hope, and that, as 
he knew a wheat-ship was going there direct, he went by it. He posted 
a letter to the manager from Port Pellew, and very likely he sent some 
others that went astray. I know several of our letters were lost at Buda.” 

Doris was going over in detail the labored explanation that had been 
arrived at by several people in succession, in face of an inexplicable 
event. A loss her mother had sustained of some important documents, 
through the carelessness of the local postmaster, whose children were 
found to have amused themselves with opening and tearing up letters, 
was fresh in Doris’s recollection. Some similar catastrophe appeared to 
her to be the clue to Victor’s strange silence, when, instead of going to 
Adelaide as he had arranged, he went and took ship to England or the 
Cape of Good Hope, no one was quite sure which. 


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A few days after Victor’s supposed departure, before anything had 
taken place to make it apparent that his plans were not carried out, 
Trevaskis had gone to Stonehouse to ask after Challoner. In the course 
of conversation with Mrs. Challoner, he had casually mentioned that it 
appeared Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, instead of going to Adelaide, had taken a trip 
to Port Pellew ; that he had received a letter from him, posted from 
there. 

“ Perhaps he’ll take a trip to the Cape or to England from there,” he 
added, half laughingly. 

Mrs. Challoner asked him what made him think so. 

“ Oh, it just struck me, when I got his letter posted from there, en- 
closing some papers without saying a word as to his altered arrange- 
ments. The day before he went away he said something about these 
sailing-ships. . . . But, at any rate. I’ll know in a day or two, for there 
was something I wanted to find out, and I sent him a letter, in the care 
of the principal hotel-keeper of the place.” 

Trevaskis all through maintained an easy, unperturbed tone, as if there 
would be nothing after all to surprise or alarm one if Victor had taken 
this extraordinary course. 

Three days later the manager again called at Stonehouse. 

“ It is as I thought about Mr. Fitz-Gibbon,” he said, after a little talk 
on indifferent subjects. “ I got a letter from the landlord of the prin- 
cipal inn to-day. The young gentleman who had stopped a night at his 
place sailed on Saturday last by one of the ships, and in his room he had 
found a little packet, which he enclosed to me. That little packet held 
three of Mr. Fitz-Gibbon’s letters and two of his visiting-cards. So 
there’s now no doubt of it. I hope he’ll have a pleasant voyage.” 

‘‘ But why should he go like that, without telling any of us ? Did 
Mr. Fitz-Gibbon say anything to you girls about going to England 
shortly ?” said Mrs. Challoner, turning to Doris and Euphemia, who were 
sitting near her and listening to all that passed. 

“ He spoke of going about the same time that we did to meet his 
mother,” said Doris, after a little pause. 

A sudden light came into the manager’s face. 

“Ah, that’s it, you may depend. Perhaps she came as far as the 
Cape, and, who knows? he may have written letters that have gone 
astray. I expect his uncle may know more. I’ve written to him all I 
know, and sent him the landlord’s letter and the only one that came to 
my hands from him.” 

So the evidence had been gradually built up. In the midst of the 
perplexity that often overcame Doris when she thought over this strange, 
sudden voyage, this firm conviction was her stay — Victor must have 
written to her to explain all, and the letter must have been lost. She 


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had not at any time been actively unhappy, but within the last two days 
a moral and physical languor had fallen upon her. She ate very little, 
her head often felt heavy, her sleep was uncertain and full of disturbed 
dreams. On the previous night she had been in a curiously clairvoyant 
state. The night was warm and the wind high, swaying the avenue trees 
around Stonehouse ceaselessly with weird, melancholy sounds that awak- 
ened vague misgivings of she knew not what indefinable ills. She fell 
asleep and woke up, again and again, repeatedly dreaming evil dreams. 
She saw things as they actually were in life, without any of the haze or 
uncertainty of visions. Faces and tones floated round her of all the 
people she had ever known — a strange zone of foreboding sounds, of 
countenances averted, and fixed on some one who was lying motionless 
on a low couch underground. She could not get near this couch, and 
she did not see the face of the one who was lying on it ; but gradually 
the conviction grew upon her that it was Victor. And when she awoke, 
feelings of dread and uneasiness for the first time took possession of her. 
They were now revived by Mrs. West’s apprehensions. 

‘‘ I can’t think as ’ow every think should ’appen together like that,” she 
said in answer to Doris’s supposition about letters having gone astray. 
“Do you know. Miss Lindsay, whether he was taking any gold with him 
to town 

Doris had heard nothing of his doing so. Why should such an event, 
if it had occurred, have any significance ? 

“ I dunno,” said Mrs. West slowly. “ There’s so many wicked things 
done for the sake o’ gold. When my brother-in-law Olsen told me as 
Mr. Fitz-Gibbon ’ad gone off secret-like and sudden, I up and said at 
once, ‘ There’s suthin’ at the bottom of this as isn’t right. Perhaps 
some one is makin’ believe in the matter because of some wickedness or 
another.’ ” 

The words kept ringing in Doris’s ears as she drove slowly back. 
They so completely engrossed her thoughts that it was not until she had 
been in the house for some little time she remembered that she was to 
have called to see Mrs. Connell’s elder little girl, who was now convales- 
cent, and who looked forward to her visits from day to day with eager 
expectation. Doris could not bear the thought of Norah’s disappoint- 
ment. As it was now close on sunset, she could not stay any time, but 
she hastened down with a little colored picture-book, which made the 
child very happy. 

As Doris was returning. Spot behaved in a strange way. He ran up 
and down alongside the iron passage, sniflfing and barking, and absolutely 
refusing to leave it. Doris went out of her way and followed Spot along 
the passage for a little time, trying to coax him to follow her. She 
came opposite to one of the little square windows. At this Spot jumped 


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wp and began to bark with noisy joy. Doris looked in. At the same 
moment some one rushed to the window violently, and drew down a 
blind. But not before a sight met her eyes so strange and incredible 
that her brain grew dizzy and her eyesight failed her. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Doris stood motionless for a few moments, supporting herself against 
the iron wall. Before any coherent purpose had formed itself in her 
mind, she saw Trevaskis leading a saddled horse towards the office. 

In a few seconds she had reached him. Before she could speak he 
had turned to her, his face full of concern, saying, 

‘‘ What is it. Miss Lindsay ? Is there anything wrong 

‘‘Do you know that Mr. Fitz-Gibbon is in there?’’ she said, pointing 
to the iron passage, her hand trembling, her voice low and quivering. 

Aided by the information he had gleaned through reading Victor’s 
half-written letter to Miss Paget, Trevaskis with instinctive quickness 
guessed all that underlay the girl’s agitation. 

“You are ill and nervous. Miss Lindsay,” he said in a studiously quiet 
and impressive voice. “Would you like to come down through the 
iron passage and see for yourself ?” 

“ Thank you, I should like to come at once,” she answered. 

Trevaskis fastened his horse to a bridle-post in front of the offices. 
Then he opened the outer door of his own, saying, “ I will just get the 
key.” He passed into his bedroom. Dan was sitting by the bed ; on 
it Victor was lying in a state of somnolent unconsciousness, muttering 
from time to time in a thick, inarticulate voice. Dan Trevaskis, with a 
face full of dull misery, fanned the sick man feebly from time to time. 

“ I’ve took ’e up. Bill. But, Gord ’elp us, ’e don’t seem to me like 
as ’e’d live. ’Twas dreadful close down there ; but ’tain’t so much bet- 
ter ’ere. Bill, I must get a doctor to ’e some’ow or other. It breaks 
ray ’eart to see and ’ear ’e, it do — it do. If you was — ” 

“ Shut up, you miserable blatherskiter, will you !” cried Trevaskis, in 
an access of sudden fury. “You went on mumbling and jabbering like 
this last night, and I told you we would get him away shortly ; now 
you dared to take him up here without my leave — and what’s the con- 
sequence ? A girl comes to me with a white face, saying Fitz-Gibbon is 
in the iron passage.” 

Without waiting for a reply to this speech, muttered in a low, menac- 
ing tone, Trevaskis closed the door after him, and rejoined Doris with a 


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279 


bunch of keys in his hand. To open the door leading into the passage, 
to traverse it to the end, to light a bull’s-eye lantern and let the partial 
gleam of it fall on the outer portion of the cave room, was the work of 
a few moments. 

“ I suppose you have been hearing rumors of Mr. Fitz-Gibbon’s disap- 
pearance, and have become anxious on his account, Miss Lindsay ?” said 
Trevaskis in a suavely sympathetic tone, as he walked beside I)oris on 
her way towards Stonehouse. 

“ I do not know what to think,” she answered in a shaken voice. 

Spot, whom Trevaskis had been careful to keep outside, made a dash 
at the door when it was opened, and now that it was shut he stood close 
against it with his nose to the ground, his eyes full of fiery animation. 
But Doris heeded him no longer. She did not even notice that he lin- 
gered behind. 

‘‘ At any rate, you see that your strange fancy was a delusion. I took 
you in without a moment’s delay, so that you could be under no mistake. 
You see. Miss Lindsay, the key of this passage never goes out of my 
possesion; so that whatever motive Mr. Fitz-Gibbon might have for 
hiding, he couldn’t do it without my knowledge.” 

“ Hiding !” repeated Doris, raising her head with a sudden, haughty 
gesture. “ He would never hide — why should he f ’ 

“ How, then, could you think that he would be there ?” 

“ There were some words running in my head,” returned Doris in a 
faint, colorless voice. “ ‘ Perhaps some one is making believe in the mat- 
ter, because of some wickedness or another.’ And then I looked in at 
the little window where Spot was bounding up, and there — half lying 
down, his eyes closed, and his face white — oh, I am glad I was deceived! 
It was terrible^” 

“I am glad that I was on the spot,” said Trevaskis, speaking in a 
tone of kindly solicitude. His face had blanched visibly while Doris 
was speaking; now a dull red mounted in his cheeks, and settled in a 
deep rim under his eyes. “I know what it is to be bothered with 
strange ideas — to fancy you see faces and things.” 

“ Have you sometimes seen things like that, then ?” asked Doris, with 
a feeling of relief. 

“ I had a touch of fever on me once, and I couldn’t close my eyes but 
I saw crowds of faces and animals, and heard people talking and shout- 
ing,” answered Trevaskis slowly. “ And not only so, but at last, when 
I went about — I was so placed that I could not keep in bed, as I should 
have done — I began to fancy I saw people in all sorts of ways — some 
dancing, others lying down as if they were dead.” 

Doris drew a long sigh. They had now reached the top of the reef, 
and looked down on Stonehouse with its surrounding trees, and the 


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illimitable western plain, gray and silent, and lightly flushed with the 
crimson afterglow which lit up the sky. 

“ You are sure that no one but yourself can get into that iron pas- 
sage she said. And then, without waiting for an answer, I think it 
would be better to search that underground room well.” 

I was down there for some hours this afternoon,” said Trevaskis, re- 
pressing with an effort the strong irritation roused by the persistence of 
her impression. “ It is very good of you to be so much interested in 
one who is almost a stranger to you. I had a letter from his uncle this 
morning. He does not seem so very much surprised. I have been won- 
dering whether the young lady he was engaged to marry knows — ” 

‘‘The young lady?” repeated Doris, looking up with a puzzled look, 
as if she had not heard aright. 

“Yes; Miss Helen Paget. Mr. Fitz-Gibbon is engaged to be married 
to her, I believe,” answered Trevaskis with slow emphasis, watching the 
girl^s face as he spoke with malicious keenness. But he was not re- 
warded by any signs of distress or confusion. Her calm gravity was un- 
disturbed, outwardly at least. A look of perplexity, perhaps of^unbe- 
lief, rose in Doris’s eyes. Trevaskis, disconcerted by her clear, uncon- 
fused gaze, took refuge in pulling out his watch, awaiting with nervous 
eagerness her reply. But she made none. Seeing Kenneth Campbell 
approach on his way towards the mine, she bowed to Trevaskis with 
simple dignity, saying, 

“ I am obliged to you for taking me into the passage, but I must not 
keep you any longer. I think I must talk to my old friend Mr. Camp- 
bell about poor Mrs. West. We are going to take her across to her 
brother’s place to-morrow.” 

Trevaskis retraced his steps with a feeling of baffled uncertainty which 
added fuel to the rage that smouldered in his mind against his brother. 
He had long ere this found the futility of endeavoring to act as though 
he were “ quite on the square.” He was terrified lest he should make 
some move that might wreck all in the end. For in the involved, dan- 
gerous game he was playing, circumstances were constantly forcing him 
to go on the hand-to-mouth plan. A much greater man than he was 
might be prone to commit blunders in such circumstances, because the 
want of proportion between his means and his ends progressively in- 
creases, and his mind is exhausted in fruitless efforts. He had to go on 
to see two of the directors of the Colmar, who had been examining an 
old mine farther north, and had telegraphed to him to be at Nilpeena to 
meet them on their way back to town. He had not much time to spare, 
but he could not go on without a word of warning to Dan. The word 
of warning turned into a violent altercation. Dan sat as if he had not 
moved during the last half-hour, staring at Victor, who still lay for the 


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most part motionless. Now and then he tossed feebly, and now and 
then he murmured half-audible words. But he did not open his eyes, 
and there was no gleam of consciousness on his face. 

When Dan saw his brother coming to the room a second time he 
started up, his heavy eyes aflame. He said nothing till Trevaskis had 
entered the room ; then he planted his back against the door with a look 
of dogged despair and determination, which checked the furious re- 
proaches that rose to the lips of the younger brother. 

“ Look ’ere. Bill, if this job is to go on it must be at the awner’s 
’count,” he said in a low, husky voice. 

“ I don’t understand you,” returned Trevaskis. 

“ Then I’ll put it feer, so as there cussn’t be a mistake. Yistidday 
was a fortnight that I parted from my awnly cheeld to go as it were in 
the place of one as was anxious to make b’law ’e ’ad left the country. 
Friday and Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I was lyin’ most of the 
time — ” 

“ Dead drunk ; yes, go on.” 

Why did ’e keep the drink to my ’and, knowin’ well that in the low, 
haaf-sared state I were in I would keep on drinkin’ ? Why did ’e draw 
the coortins and keep the place quiet, so ’ut I might lie there without 
countin’ day nor night? Why did ’e — ” 

“ Suppose I don’t choose to be cross-examined by you like this, as if 
I were a country bumpkin in the hands of a curb-stone lawyer,” said 
Trevaskis, his eyes flashing ominously. 

“ And then, when I coom a little to myself, you took me down to a 
hawl of a place, where this young man was lying, and you patched up 
some sort of a yarn, and I sucked in every word like Gospel truth. You 
didn’t wait till I was clever and feelin’ like a man,” said Dan, with a 
catch in his throat. But he overcame the weakness, and went on, with 
that tense indignation which sweeps all artifice before it, No, you 
made me b’law as ’twas for the sake of my lad partly, and that you 
wanted to take care o’ the young man — to nuss ’e, to be good to ’e.” 

So I did—” 

So you did not. All the time you’ve been pizening ’e with drugs. 
Shame on you to do such a cowardly thing, and me takin’ every care 
on ’e.” 

“You fool! what is the good of exciting yourself like this?” cried 
Trevaskis, beyond himself with rage, his eyes glowing like coals, his face 
ashen to the lips. 

“ I may be a fool and an idjit, but I won’t be a murderer.” 

“ A murderer 1” cried Trevaskis, starting up with a threatening move- 
ment of his hand. 

“Yes, a murderer, a murderer, a murderer!” cried Dan, raising his 


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voice a»d drawing nearer to his brother, who gazed at him with a feel- 
ing akin to fear. 

For the good Lord’s sake, hold your tongue I” said Trevaskis in a 
low voice. “Do you want to draw a crowd of miners round the place? 
Do you want to have me accused of what I never meant to do ? Do 
you want to have your own boy exposed to all the world as a thief? 
What good will all this do you? Come, Dan, be reasonable. We’ve 
both lost our heads a little. Give me your hand, like a good fellow. 
You needn’t be afraid that anything will happen to this young man. A 
little laudanum won’t kill any one ; and you must see that if he got his 
senses clean back while he’s here, it would be all up with me.” 

Dan, who was rarely moved to great excitement, listened to his brother 
in stolid silence. In silence he took his proffered hand, and seemed to 
assent to what he said. 

“ I don’t mind your keeping him in this room to-night, only be care- 
ful, Dan, be careful. After I come back to-morrow, you must go away 
for a day and a night for a little change.” 

Dan sat for nearly an hour after his brother went away, close to the 
bed on which Victor was lying. A terrible thought had fastened on his 
mind. It was a close, sultry night, with a hot wind blowing from the 
northeast. The sky was deeply overcast, the daylight was fading, and 
a darkness heavier than that of night had fallen on this man, bereaved, 
lonely, and despairing. 

“ I want to get up — I want to get away — why do you tie me like 
this?” Victor muttered over and over again, throwing his hands about 
with a convulsive, helpless gesture. After a time he turned over, and 
gradually fell into a deep sleep, breathing heavily. 

“ Bill means to kill ’e — to give ’e a big dose when ’e gets me away, 
and then when I come back ’e’ll make me bury ’e somewheres. ’E’ll 
make me do everything. But I won’t, I won’t ! I’ll take ’e away some- 
how before he comes back ; I’ll take ’e away this very night.” 

Dan’s brain seemed to be on fire. Even as he gasped out his deter- 
mination to take prompt action, he was conscious of a creeping lassitude, 
of a total inability to plan or act. He felt dizzy, and the walls seemed 
to close around him. He went out, locking the outer door behind him, 
feeling that if he did not get away for a little time he would choke, or 
fall down in a fit. There was no fresh air to revive him ; yet even the 
dismal wailing wind, full of sulphurous smoke, warm as if it had escaped 
from a seething caldron, thick with dust and mullock grit, was better 
than the close room in which Victor’s motionless form and pale face 
struck an indefinable fear into Dan’s soul. The long - continued ten- 
sion, the morbid nervousness that had seized him on the day he had 
met his boy under such unhappy circumstances, had now come to a 


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283 


climax. He walked bareheaded along the foot of the reef above the 
mine, with its dull roar of machinery and its flaring lights. A sort 
of blurred confusion fell on him ; he gave up trying to think what 
he should do. He saw some one coming towards him — some one 
who came close up against him. Dan stood aside to let him pass. 
But the man did not pass; he came up to him, and gripped both his 
hands. 

Dan, Dan, what’s come to ye ? To-morrer I leave this mine for 
good, and I’ve been lookin’ for you to say good-by. I ast for you of 
the cap’en, and he shut me hup as if I was a cut-throat. My missis is 
bad again, and I won’t come back ’ere no more.” Dan made a hoarse 
murmur by way of reply. “ P’raps ’tain’t my business, but ’pears to me, 
Dan, there’s summat wrong with you besides hillness.” 

“ Iss, ’Zilla, iss,” burst out Dan, not waiting to think or parley with 
himself, “ summat is wrong with me in body and soul, and if I don’t get 
some ’elp I don’t know what’s to come to I.” 

“Tell me what it be, Dan. You as good as saved my life once, and I 
don’t forget that.” 

“You are goin’ away to-morrer?” 

“ But I can wait.” 

“ No, don’t wait ; .you can help me to-night. But swear on your 
knees, in the bearin’ o’ the living God — if so be as ’e cares to listen to 
we — that you’ll never, never speak to any one of what I tell ye, that 
you’ll ax no question over what I say. Swear to me on your soul, as 
you hope to be saved from eternal damnation ; swear to me, ’Zilla, for 
the sake o’ old times.” 

Dan’s voice was hoarse with anguish. He was trembling, and his 
hands were cold and clammy. At that moment he clung to his old 
friend as to one providentially sent to save him from the terrible fate 
that, to his excited fancy, seemed momentarily drawing nearer. 

“ I swear, Dan, I swear to do what I can for you, short o’ foul sin, 
and that you wouldn’t ax o’ me,” answered ’Zilla. “ What trouble be 
you in ?” 

“ A man’s been badly ’urt by accident — ” 

“ A man on the mine — a young man ?” cried ’Zilla, with a strange sus- 
picion rising in his mind. 

“ I didn’t mean to do ’e ’arm, and it’s no fault o’ mine, and you must 
keep to your promise, ’Zilla, and ax no questions,” answered Dan dog- 
gedly. 

“ I won’t, Dan, I won’t ! A man’s been ’urt, you say ?” 

“And I’ve been trying to nuss’e. I’ve been on the job for some time. 
Lord in heaven, I’ve lost count o’ days !” 

“ On the mine here, Dan, without no doctor ? There, I don’t want a 


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hanswer ; only when you’re swellin’ with sore amazement you must let it 
off some’ow. You’ve been on the job for some time, Dan?” 

Yes, and I dussent tell a livin’ soul, for fear o’ being took by the 
throat and clapped into prison.” 

“ And you innercent, Dan ?” 

Do you misbelieve me, ’Zilla?” 

“ No, my old mate — no, I don’t ; but — There — no, I won’t — go on, 
Dan.” 

“ And now this night a hawful fear ’as come upon me, ’Zilla ; a fear 
o’ crime and blood-guiltiness that ’ud hang round ray neck like the 
nether millstone, and drag me low down below the very foundations o’ 
hell.” 

“ Oh, Dan, Dan ! ’e ain’t a-dyin’ ? I won’t ax another question ; but 
tell me ’e ain’t a-dyin’ ?” 

“ No, ’Zilla — no, no ; but I want ’e to get better quicker nor I can 
make ’e wi’ drugses out o’ a bought box, made up by people as never saw 
the sick ones as swallers ’em. I want ’e to be took care of above ground, 
not down in a dark, lonesome cave place.” 

“ Down in a cave place, Dan ? Slinkin’ there alone and in secret with 
a man badly hurt? ’Gw in the name o’ the A’moighty did you get into 
such a hawful fix, and you an innercent man ?” 

’Zilla’s voice was full of consternation and wonder. He spoke without 
any afterthought as to his friend’s veracity. Dan understood this, feel- 
ing that the whole affair was so full of perplexing mystery that it was 
taking an unfair advantage of his old mate to appeal to him for help, 
while giving him so little confidence. It was a sudden fear lest he should 
be tempted to betray his brother that led him to reply, in a gruff tone, 

“ ’Zilla, the world is full o’ Hards. Don’t you go a-haddin’ to the 
number. You promised not to ax questions ?” 

I did, Dan, I did, and I won’t go back on my word. You want to 
have this man took to a place where ’e’ll be well took care of — say, to an 
’orsepital ?” 

“ Iss, ’Zilla, and with money to pay for the best nussin’.” 

“ There’s a private ’orsepital been lately opened at Broombush, for 
those as can pay well.” 

‘‘ Yes, that’s been running in my ’ead, ’Zilla. But — ” 

In course, you want to get him took there without you appearin’ in 
the matter ?” 

Nor you, ’Zilla, for that ’ud come to the same thing.” 

“ I know that. Did you ever see a hold Scoty as goes about with an 
’awker’s wagon, sellin’ religious books, and preachin’ on Sundays and 
week-days, when ’e can get chaps to listen as ’ow’s there’s few to be 
saved, and it’s very onlike it’s them ?” 


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^85 


“ No, I never did 

“ And ’ave you some sort of a machine and a beast as you can make 
a start with this very night T 

I could borrer the light ’Merican wagon as belongs to the place, and 
there’s a beast in the stable. But what do you mean, ’Zilla?” 

’Zilla briefly explained that Kenneth Campbell was going on the mor- 
row to take Mrs. West to her brother’s at the Half-way House. That 
he was a man who was always on the lookout to do things for people 
in need, and had already taken several men, who were suffering from 
fever at the mine, to the hospital in Broombush Creek in his wagon. 

My idear is, if you was to make a start to-night, and meet him some- 
where on the way — ” said ’Zilla, pausing a little dubiously, as he saw 
that there were some grave obstacles. If Dan had a horse and trap, even 
one as fanatical for serving his fellow-creatures as Kenneth was might 
wonder why the man who, with such conveniences, had come upon a 
helpless invalid in the bush, did not at once convey him to a place of 
refuge, instead of appealing to a casual passer-by. But here the thoughts 
which had been slowly revolving in Dan’s mind during the last endless 
days and nights, in connection with this matter, came to his aid. 

I won’t meet the ould chap o’ the road at all, ’Zilla,” he said eagerly. 
“ I ’aven’t told you — we ’adn’t much talk together sin’ I coom this time 
— but I was goin’ to work a claim theer, about a mile to the south o’ 
what they call the broken-down whim.” 

That’s feer within two miles and a ’arf o’ the ’Arf-way ’Ouse, Dan ! 
That ’ull be most on the track.” 

“ Iss, and there’s a bit of a shanty there. I’ll go this very night. I’ll 
sturt in two hours, with the sick man on a mattress quite comfortable 
like, ’Zilla. Oh, ’Zilla ! the weight as is took off my ’eart. I’ll be like 
camped there, and this ould chap as is so given up to doin’ things for 
people, he can coom along from the ’Arf-way ’Ouse.” 

“ Iss, Dan, you scratch me a few lines, and I’ll go acrost and show 
them.” 

‘‘ And ’e’ll be sartin sure to coom ?” 

‘‘ As sure as there’s breath in ’is body, and any one needin’ ’is help,” 
answered ’Zilla solemnly. 

An hour later, ’Zilla went across to Stonehouse to see Kenneth. He 
was not in his wagon, and ’Zilla went to the kitchen to ask where he 
would be likely to find him. 

‘‘ ’Tis about this journey o’ his to-morrer,” he explained to Bridget, 
who stood at the door, fanning herself vigorously with a Chinese paper 
fan. 

“ Shure, thin, and if it’s to take ahny more sick people it cahn’t be 
done ; for the mistress hersilf is going as far as the Half-way House, 


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besides the sick woman and Miss Doris. Ye see, it’s loike this,” said 
Bridget, who was always ready to offer elaborate explanations of every 
domestic project. “ Mrs. Challoner, she haven’t been shlaping at ahl at 
ahl for days and noights ; and it just tuk Mrs. Murray in the head, if she 
went for a dhroive in the wagon, it might lull her loike, and be a little 
change; so — ” 

Before Bridget’s flowing narrative had come to an end, Kenneth came 
round the back veranda, and ’Zilla gave him the note, which he had re- 
ceived from an old mate of his, who was at work somewhere not far from 
the Half-way House. 


CHAPTER XXXYII. 

It was close on four o’clock in the afternoon of the following day be- 
fore Kenneth’s roomy wagon reached the Half-way House. During the 
latter part of the journey Mrs. Challoner began to doze. As soon as they 
entered the little inn, which was empty of customers and very quiet, they 
induced her to lie down, and in a few minutes she was sound asleep. 
This was the result for which Mrs. Murray had so fervently hoped, when 
she induced her sister to take a long, slow drive. ‘‘ If she falls asleep, 
my dear, don’t wake her up on any account,” were her last whispered 
words to Doris. And now Doris closed the door of the little bedroom 
softly, and went out to tell Kenneth that they must put off their return 
till Mrs. Challoner awoke. 

Kenneth, with a somewhat blotted sheet of paper in his hand, was 
talking to the landlord, who was pointing out a slight rise some dis- 
tance south off the highway which led to the diggings. Doris waited 
till the two men had flnished their talk, and then delivered her message 
to Kenneth. She was surprised to learn that he was going to a place 
beyond the broken-down whim, to take a sick man to the hospital at the 
diggings. 

“It was nearly nine last night when I got this,” he said, folding up 
the sheet of paper. “ Mrs. Murray thought I’d better say nothing about 
it to Mrs. Challoner; she might want to come on, or it might distract 
her mind. Thanks be to the Most High that he has sent her sleep,” 
said Kenneth, uncovering his head in his slow, reverent way. “ I did not 
like this restless wakefulness night after night.” 

“Some one ill — away in a place like that — quite alone, Kenneth? 
Has there been any one looking after him ?” asked Doris, with a startled 
air. 


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287 


As so often happens when the mind is much engrossed with any sub- 
ject, her thoughts instantly reverted to the apparition of the preceding 
afternoon on hearing of this invalid. 

“ This is all I know of the matter, Miss Doris,” answered Kenneth, 
handing her the sheet of paper with a few roughly written lines. 

“ One and a half mile of Broke down wim. 

“ZiLLA Jenkins, — i hev come acrost a young man as badly wants looken arter in 
a orsepetal or some such, wich beein enable to do so myself, ef you nows of eny one 
kumin along shortly to the Higgins would you ax him to kindly call at the broke down 
wim. A NOLD Maite.” 

It was a little difficult for Doris to make out the meaning conveyed 
by the unfamiliar orthography, but as soon as she had caught the gist of 
the lines a curious change came over her face. The pallid languor which 
had been settling on it within the last few days was replaced by a vivid 
flush ; her eyes glowed, her lips parted in eager expectancy. 

Kenneth, I know where the broken-down whim is ; I want to come 
with you,” she said, in a voice but little above a whisper. 

And Kenneth, who had from her childhood obeyed the girl’s slightest 
wish, found the few gentle objections he raised Anally overruled. 

“ But you won’t come to the diggings, dear Miss Doris,” he said, as 
he turned his horses’ head towards the rock that rose near the broken- 
down whim, and looked across the complete flatness of the intervening 
country as if it were within half a mile of the Half-way House. Mr, 
Keltie tells me that I’ll have to come back to this road almost in a 
straight line, so as to get on the high-road to the diggings. So I’ll 
leave you here on the way back ; the journey would be too fatiguing for 
you, and, forbye, it’s very like this poor man is suffering from fever.” 

This poor man.” The words woke a strange, deep pain in the girl’s 
heart. Could there be any grounds for the thought that had lodged 
itself so obstinately in her mind ? All through the past night she had lain 
in a sort of waking dream, seeing over and over again the prostrate form, 
and the blanched, motionless face, which for one brief instant had been 
as absolutely visible to her as the earth under her feet or the sky above. 
She was forced to believe that the sight was in some way a repetition of 
the feverish dreams that she had perpetually dreamed on the previous 
night. Some of her earliest childish recollections were of faces and voices 
seen and heard in sleep, that were as real to her as the voices and 
faces of waking hours. But might not these repeated dreams, and that 
vision seen in the daylight, be forecasts of what she was now about to 
see ? 

She recalled an old book on dreams, and what was called second sight, 
she had once been reading, and which, at her mother’s wish, she put 
away, on being told she was not yet old enough to read such things. 


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‘‘ There was so much that darling maman used to tell me I would un- 
derstand better when I was older,” she thought, ‘‘ but I think things 
seem stranger and harder to understand the older I grow.” She put her 
head down wearily with a stifled sigh. The languor of the past few days 
weighed on Doris more than any of the household knew. 

“ Oh, Kenneth, can we not go a little faster ?” she said, after a few 
moments, flnding that Kenneth’s horses seemed to have almost fallen 
asleep. 

Kenneth was, in truth, deep in one of his beloved mystics and the 
brooding reveries habitual to him when travelling. When Doris spoke 
he remonstrated with his horses, and soon afterwards they passed the 
broken-down whim, and the dark, abrupt rock near it with its startling 
echoes. 

Doris recalled every word and incident of the day she flrst saw this 
place, and Victor had spoken of going with them when they went 
across that other mysterious sea, full of color and sound and motion ; 
not gray and uniform and silent as this was. And yet not quite silent. 
A few sounds broke the torpor of the monotonous plain, and were 
thrown back in lengthened echoes by this solitary rock beside a water- 
less well. 

The rumbling of the wagon, the solitary call of a white eagle poised 
in mid-air, the strokes of an axe in the distance, were repeated with 
clear, lengthened reverberations that magnified the original notes into 
a cadenced volume of sounds with weird, mocking undertones. The 
weather-board hut, standing over a mile beyond the broken-down whim, 
was on the border of a watercourse lined with small sandal-wood trees. 
As Kenneth drove up to the front of the hut, Dan came out to meet him. 
For a little time after Kenneth got out Doris remained in the wagon. 
Now that they had reached the place the thought of finding her waking 
vision realized here made the few moments that followed a time of sick- 
ening suspense. 

“ Oh, no, no ; it is impossible,” she said to herself, looking at the little 
hut, and overcome by a sudden conviction of the unreality of her imag- 
inings. It must be true that her senses had been tricked by some touch 
of fever. Was it not fever which at this moment made her head so hot 
and heavy, her sight so uncertain, and her hands so unsteady ? Yet, as 
she doubted and reasoned with herself, she leaned forward, eagerly watch- 
ing for the next event. 

As her eyes fell on Dan, a troubled recollection shot across her brain. 
Had she not caught a swift glimpse of his fac^ yesterday, when that 
torturing vision of Victor had flashed on her for one incredible moment? 
For an instant her memory seemed sane and trustworthy, but then doubt 
and confusion fell upon her. She could but dumbly wait and watch. As 


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289 


for Dan, the moment he saw Doris he recognized with a terrible misgiv- 
ing the beautiful young face that for a few seconds had looked in through 
the little window of the iron passage. This was the young lady who 
had gone to his brother to declare that she had seen Mr. Fitz-Gibbon. 
Had she come now so as to be able to convict the two of them ? 

Dan, though in many respects quick to perceive, was slow to act, more 
especially when placed in circumstances where prompt and masterful de- 
ception was necessary to insure his safety. He had little of his brother’s 
power of instantaneously producing a plausible story, according to the 
requirements of an unlooked-for emergency. Neither the bent of his 
mind nor the course of his life had fostered this gift. He stood listen- 
ing to Kenneth without hearing a word he said, expecting that every sec- 
ond this girl with her deep, wonderful eyes would step to his side, say- 
ing, “ Why did you hide this ailing man underground at the mine, and 
then carry him off to the wilds?” Had she done so, Dan, in these first 
few moments, could no more have attempted to lie to her than to an 
angel from heaven. But nothing of this kind happened. After the first 
quick, wondering look at him, the girl sat back in the wagon, neither 
moving nor speaking. As for Kenneth, his talk was not of a kind to call 
either for a ready answer or for great vigilance on the part of any one 
wishing to deceive him. 

When Dan recalled his scattered wits sufficiently to catch the drift of 
the old man’s words, he found he was deep in a discourse on the bless- 
ings of solitude. 

“ In the wilderness I have ever found the posterns of the dwelling of 
peace,” he was saying. “ It is in the midst of the world that the fiesh 
gets its most signal victories, till it grows insolent and domineering, and 
drugs its poor, fettered companion, the spirit, with carnal opiates till it 
loses all sight and hearing. ... It was into the wilds of Arabia that St. 
Paul departed after his conversion, and saw visions and dreamed dreams 
it was not lawful to utter to uncircumcised ears. But why do I speak of 
mere man ? Did not the King of Heaven, who was born for our sakes 
among the beasts of the field, who was fed on a little breast-milk, and 
gave up his life between two criminals, also often go away into the un- 
peopled wastes ? My friend, I hope that the solemn influences of these 
solitary plains are not unknown to you.” 

“ No, sir — oh, no,” stammered Dan, quite at sea as to Kenneth’s mean- 
ing. ^‘Gosh! ’Zilla didn’t say as he was crazed,” was his inward re- 
flection. But, as the conviction grew on him that he had to do with a 
man of unsound mind, he recovered his courage and presence of mind. 

‘‘ I am glad of that, sincerely glad,” said Kenneth fervently. “ It is in 
such scenes as these that we recollect our vagrant thoughts, and renounce 
the exterior extravagancies of our conduct.” 

19 


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“ Was you goin’ to take this poor young man as ’as come acrost me 
suffering from fever or some such to the diggins orsepital, sir?” asked 
Dan. who began to fear that, if he did not cut short the spates of the 
old man’s eloquence, he might become entirely oblivious of the object of 
his visit. 

‘‘ Ah, yes, yes. You have sheltered him and nursed him. But tell me, 
have you spoken to him of more important matters ? Does he seem alive 
to the interests of his immortal soul ?” 

“ He don’t look much alive in any way just at present, I’m sorry to 
say,” answered Dan, leading the way to Victor’s side, where he was lying 
with a rug over -him on a mattress, on which Dan had conveyed him in 
the American wagon. Before leaving the mine, he had deemed it pru- 
dent to give him a dose out of the bottlefnl of medicine which Trevaskis 
had left. Dan would much sooner have given his patient no more of 
this, knowing it was a narcotic. But things being as they were, he rec- 
ognized the necessity of keeping Victor unconscious while removing him. 
But either the quantity Dan had administered was too small, or repeated 
doses of the sedative for more than a week had rendered it partially inef- 
fective. At any rate, this first dose, instead of making Victor sleep, had 
acted as a stimulant, so that, on the way to the hut, he made repeated 
efforts to get out of the wagon. Miss Paget, he said, wanted to see 
him ; she was waiting for him ; he had something very important to tell 
Helen, and he had been tied and kept in the dark for so long. Dan was 
reassured to find how much strength he retained. It was hard work to 
make him keep in the wagon, and when, after a little time, he complained 
of thirst, Dan had mixed a dose of laudanum with the beef-tea he gave 
him. Since then he had been lying for the most part unconscious. 

Now, as the two men stood by him, he turned over and muttered a 
few inarticulate words. Kenneth felt his pulse. 

“I suppose it’s fever he has, he seems greatly reduced. How long 
has he been with you ?” he said, fixing his large, melancholy eyes on 
Dan’s face. 

“A good few days. ’E speaks a lot sometimes, and a deal more wan- 
dering of late. From what I’ve picked up, I should say as ’e’s been 
wanting to ’ide from his people for some reason,” said Dan, plunging 
with many qualms and pricks of conscience into the fictitious statements 
he had ready in case of being questioned. 

• Ah, poor young man ! poor young man ! He cannot hide from the 
eyes of the Most High,” said Kenneth. 

It was curious how the old man’s readiness to speak of things not of 
this earth lessened Dan’s fear of being caught tripping when making 
statements that had no foundation in fact. 

“ ’Ere’s some gold as ’e ’ad on him,” he said in a calm, confident voice, 


THE SILENT SEA 


291 


handing Kenneth the purse of sovereigns he had filled from his own 
store. “ I b’law there’s a private orsepital now at the diggins. It ’ull be 
best to take him there, bein’ by all happearances a gentleman, and used 
to softer ’andling than ’e’d get among common folks. Now, sir, if you 
drawr the mattress from under ’e. I’ll take it and fix it in your ma- 
chine.” 

Dan, as he spoke, lifted Victor in the rug and placed the pillows un- 
der his head. As he took up the mattress to carry it to the wagon, he 
asked Kenneth whether there was not some one in the vehicle. Kenneth 
replied that there was a young lady, the daughter of an old master of 
his, who had come with her friend, Mrs. Challoner, on an errand of 
mercy as far as the Half-way House. Dan was relieved of all apprehen- 
sion by this, reply. Yet, when on reaching the wagon he found Doris, 
after alighting and waiting on the farther side, with an expression of 
strained expectancy on her face, he divined that all danger was not over. 
He touched his hat respectfully. 

“ I am going to laid the wagon a little nearer, so as to lift the sick 
man in,” he said, speaking without any sign of emotion, though his 
pulses were beating hard and fast as he anticipated the moment in which 
this lovely, grave-eyed young lady should catch the first sight of the 
patient. 

‘‘ Is he so very ill ?” she asked softly. She did not hear what Dan 
said in reply. He was leading the horses, and the rumbling of the 
wheels as the wagon was drawn as close as possible to the front of the 
hut overpowered his speech. Doris followed, and stood at a little dis- 
tance. And then, as Kenneth and Dan carried the sick man out be- 
tween them, she caught sight of his face. For an instant her heart 
seemed to stop, and then it fluttered like a bird suddenly snared, and 
all around grew dim. 

Oh, Kenneth ! — Kenneth ! — it is Victor !” She thought she was 
crying the w^ords out aloud ; but though her lips moved, her voice did 
not even reach whispering-point. She stood as if riveted to the ground, 
not even drawing nearer as they placed Victor on the mattress in the 
bottom of the wagon. They' were very gentle and careful in handling 
him — placing a pillow under his head and folding the soft, striped 
rug round him. He moaned and murmured some words in an indis- 
tinct voice. Doris noted it all, standing speechless and motionless, her 
lips slightly parted, her face blanched and colorless as a lily. 

As soon as Victor was safe in the wagon, Kenneth began to look in 
the big, miscellaneously filled locker for a book of devotions he wished 
to give Dan, who took advantage of this interval to approach Doris. 
He knew that she was overpowered with emotion, but he pretended to 
notice nothing of this, and spoke in his ordinary tones. 


292 


THE SILENT SEA 


It ain’t a putty place this for a man to be ill in. iVe done my best 
for the gentleman sin’ he coom to me ; but — ” 

“ Ah, I know him — he is a friend of ours — Mr. Victor Fitz-Gibbon, 
who used to be at the mine,” broke out Doris, who, like one in a night- 
mare, suddenly recovered the power of speech on being spoken to. 

Dan threw as much astonishment as possible into his face and voice 
on hearing this. Then Doris falteringly reached the end of the wagon, 
and looked, with all her soul in her eyes, at Victor lying in such strange 
unconsciousness of her presence. 

“ ’E’s not so bad as ’e looks — ’e’s ’ad some medicine to make ’e sleep 
— ’e’ll wake up fo’mby quite fresh-like, and be ’isself in a few days,” 
said Dan soothingly, forced in spite of himself to say something to re- 
lieve the anguish of anxiety so touchingly visible on Doris’s face. 

“ Yes — yes. I have to start — at once,” said Victor, moving restlessly. 

The sound of his voice, and Dan’s consoling assurance, lightened 
Doris’s worst fears. Looking from Victor into Dan’s face, she told him 
of the strange sight she had seen, or thought she had seen, in the iron 
passage at the mine. 

‘‘ And you thoft you saw me as well as the young man ?” said Dan in 
a wondering tone. Ah, ’tis just ’nough to ’maze one the way dreams 
come true at times.” 

But I was wide awake ; and T looked in because Spot would stay 
and bark, as if there were some one he knew. If he were here now, you 
would see how he would recognize Mr. Fitz-Gibbon ; we left him at 
home for fear he would waken Mrs. Challoner if she fell asleep,” ex- 
plained Doris. 

The longer Dan spoke to her, the more completely he fell under the 
spell of those wonderful eyes, with their clear sincerity of gaze. He 
felt in a vague way that it was more disgraceful to lie to this girl than 
it was to deceive the common ruck of mankind. But he had to protect 
his boy fleeing from justice, and his brother from detection ; his brother, 
the ex-member of Parliament, the trusted manager, and upright justice 
of the peace, whose crafty, dangerous game was now nearly at an end, 
leaving him scatheless, untouched by a breath of suspicion as to violence 
or fraud or falsehood. And the thought that this strange episode of 
imposition and concealment and sickening apprehensions was now really 
at an end, stimulated Dan’s imagination. He told Doris, in his homely, 
unpolished phrases, how he was fossicking about for gold, and how, more 
than a week ago, this young man came along, not feeling very well, and 
how he had gradually got worse ; how he seemed to have some reason 
for concealing from his friends where he was ; and how, since he had 
been delirious, he kept on often calling on a young lady — Helen” he 
sometimes called her — ‘‘ Miss Paget” at other times. 


The silent sea 


29B 


In saying this, Dan studiously looked away. He had not the slight- 
est doubt that the young lady before him was the subject of Victor’s 
troubled snatches of talk ; that it was her name which had so often 
lingered on his lips as he made restless efforts to get to her. He divined, 
too, that his knowledge would not displease the girl, whose agonized 
anxiety on the young man’s behalf had so clearly revealed her feelings. 
On hearing the names Dan repeated, Doris started, drawing in her breath 
like one who had received a sudden blow. 

And to think as ye, who was wide awake, had a sort o’ vision of me, 
too, so many miles off,” said Dan in a tone of wonder, still looking tow- 
ards the wavering course of the Broombush Creek, which in the vicinity 
of the broken-down whim was more thickly lined with slender sandal- 
wood trees than the shrub from which the watercourse took its name. 
Rough and untutored as he was in the conventions of polite conduct, his 
instinctive delicacy led him to keep his eyes turned from the young lady’s 
face for some little time after the revelation he had made to her. It 
’minds me,” he went on reflectively, ‘‘ of what appeared to myself many 
years ago. I was after an ’ard stem, stoppin’ a bock in a Cornish mine — ” 

“ Here is the book I have been searching for,” said Kenneth, ap- 
proaching the two with a small, thick volume in his hands, turning over 
the leaves and glancing from passage to passage with the familiarity be- 
gotten by a long friendship. He gave it to Dan, saying, “ Take it, my 
friend, in remembrance of the Samaritan-like kindness you have shown 
to this young man. Read it day by day, and prize the privilege you 
enjoy of living here, in total abstraction from the carnal pleasures and 
excesses of the world.” 

Dan made an uneasy motion, and gave a deprecatory little grunt. He 
understood enough of Kenneth’s speech to make him recall with dismay 
the two bottles of brandy he had “ put away ” a short time before, in 
the course of four days. But the glamour of solitary reverie and absorp- 
tion in the inner life was at this epoch strong on Kenneth, and he went 
on with rising enthusiasm, 

“ Here, where you do not go abroad at all, where you labor much and 
seldom talk, where you eat sparingly, without any of those dainty cates 
which tempt the senses, where you are clothed in homely attire, you 
have precious opportunities of living the higher life. You may rise at 
dawn to pray and meditate, you may read long and often, be vigilant 
against the snares of the enemy of souls, and persevere in the practice 
of holy exercises. In the lonely watches of the night — ” 

“ The yowling of the dingoes is sometimes hawful, sir,” said Dan, 
anxious to bring the old man back to plain matters of fact. “ Do you 
know,” he added, lowering his voice, that this sick man is a friend of 
the young lady as is with you 2” 


294 


THE SILENT SEA 


Dan glanced at Doris as lie spoke, his eyes full of puzzled apprehen- 
sion. She was standing by the wagon, looking eastward into the vast 
gray plain with a tense, fixed gaze. The pallor of her face was startling. 
Her silk dust-cloak and gauze veil were blown backward, and as her 
face and slight girlish form were fully revealed, there was something in 
her look and attitude that brought a climbing sorrow into Dan’s throat. 
It seemed as though she ought to be sheltered even from the dust-laden 
breath of the Jiot wind in her mother’s arms. Yet here she stood in 
this arid solitude, with a strange seal of sorrow and loneliness on her 
face. Dan expected that Kenneth would receive the news he told him 
with interested surprise, and that he would instantly question the young 
lady as to the name, etc., of the sick man ; but Kenneth merely replied, 

“ Ay, ay, he must have been at the mine then. The sun is lower than 
I thought ; we must be going on our way.” 

With a few parting injunctions as to the true welfare of the soul, Ken- 
neth returned by the track he had followed in coming. As the vehicle 
started, Dan gave a parting look at Victor lying in motionless slumber ; 
at Doris, who, sitting sideways, kept her eyes almost constantly fixed 
on him ; at Kenneth, whose lean, grave face had already assumed the 
dreamy, absent look which usually settled on it when slowly driving 
through the Bush. 

“ If I ’adn’t told so many whoppers,” thought Dan, I’d fall on my 
knees and thank God for a hour on end.” 

As soon as night set in he was on his way back to the Colmar mine, 
which he reached an hour after Trevaskis had returned from Nilpeena. 


CHAPTER XXXVHI. 

Kenneth’s horses, which he had driven together for nearly five years, 
had gradually acquired the art of seeming to walk briskly, while in truth 
their pace was very slow. But on the way from the hut beyond the 
broken-down whim Doris took no note of this. For the first mile she 
sat as she had done in coming, on the front seat beside Kenneth, but 
watching Victor intently. She saw that when the wagon went over 
uneven ground the motion jolted him roughly. His head rolled from 
side to side, and he muttered uneasily. She could not bear that he 
should endure this discomfort. 

“ Kenneth, don’t you think I had better sit so that I can support Mr. 
Fitz-Gibbon’s head ?” she said timidly, after the first mile had been got 
over. 


THE SILENT SEA 


295 


Yes, Miss Doris dear, it is very thoughtful of you. Then you know 
his name ? To be sure, that good man — maybe I ought to have asked 
who he was — told me you had seen the sick man before. Perhaps you 
would wish to come all the way to the diggings, so that he should be 
better cared for 

“ Oh, yes, yes ! Please don’t go to the Half-way House at all, Ken- 
neth, till we return,” pleaded Doris. 

“Just as you wish. Miss Doris. If Mrs. Challoner wakes before we 
get back, she’ll know you’re safe with me. I’m thinking, by the look 
of the sky, that there’s a dust-storm coming on. But we’re safe in the 
keeping of the Shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleeps.” 

Kenneth took one of the movable seats of the wagon, and fixed it 
for Doris close beside the invalid. Then they went on their way 
once more. At sundown Kenneth halted to make some tea. Victor 
half woke up and drank a cupful. He looked at Kenneth as he sup- 
ported his head and held the cup to his lips, and murmured some 
broken words. The next instant he was once more in a state of drowsy 
unconsciousness. A quarter of an hour later, when within a mile 
of the diggings, a dust-storm broke over them with terrific violence. 
The horses refused to face it. Kenneth stopped on the sheltered side 
of a clump of sandal-wood trees, and made the tilt of the wagon as 
fast as possible against the dust. But it came in driving showers 
through every chink and cranny. Doris, stooping over Victor, 
shielded his face with her dust-cloak. Now that the motion of the 
wagon had ceased, his sleep was less broken, his breathing more 
regular. 

As Doris sat holding her cloak over him, his head resting against her 
knees, all the confiicting emotions which had taken possession of her, 
when the incredible assertion made by Trevaskis on the preceding day 
had been so strangely confirmed by Dan’s words, died away. He was 
safe, and he would live, and reach “Helen” after he had been nursed 
back to health. As for herself, she was confused and very weary. Oh, 
if she could only go to her mother ! The vital forces, which had been 
subtly undermined for some days back, fiagged lower. She did not 
cling to the world or any of its bewildering, cruel stories. She could 
not understand them. She longed only for the profound love that had 
wrapped her round all her life, and never deceived or wounded her. 
She did not fear death. In her mind, it was associated solely with the 
great peace that had reigned in that quiet room in her old home, full 
of roses and sunlight, in which but a few months ago her mother had 
awakened from the dream of life with a look of rapturous serenity on 
her face. 

The very memory of that dear countenance, stamped with a profound 


296 


THE SILENT SEA 


and unutterable peace, seemed to soothe every lingering regret. She 
could see the sky growing darker, even the sunset flush trembling into 
wanness, as the dust-storm raged with the fitful wails of ^a wind that 
rushes at its own wild caprice over boundless plains, without a solitary 
wall or hill, or even a line of trees, to impede its course. The grayness 
of the earth, in this region perpetually clad in dead colors, became even 
dimmer. The light waned in the sky, and the wind blew more furiously. 
To Doris it seemed as though all around were mounting billows, ready 
to float her to the verge of the unknown shore which at some unknown 
distance must bound this unmeasured sea, before so silent, but now full 
of commotion, of shrill, tumultuous voices. But gradually they died 
away ; they swooned into the silence that sooner or later falls upon all 
the sounds and tumults of the world. 

The sickle of a young moon hung low on the horizon, and stars trem- 
bled into sight ; the cries of a long line of water-fowl, flying from some 
drought-stricken district, sounded far and thin overhead ; the rumble of 
the wheels, the beat of the horses’ hoofs, the cries of the birds, the light 
of moon and stars in the sky, the sudden arrest of the emotion that 
formed the dominant pulse of her young life, happy, tender memories of 
her mother — all were woven by the mysterious shuttle of sleep into a deli- 
cate tissue that bore the mask of reality. 

The wind had changed. It was soft and low, breathing from the 
west, with long lines of dreams in its wake — dreams that were at flrst 
like vaguely luminous pictures. They seemed to fall from successive 
heights in slender streams of transparent foam, and then slowly invade 
the gray plains with silvery waves of light, lapping against the shore in 
numberless battalions that were perpetually renewed. . . . She was glid- 
ing over the yellow sands, and the light of the moon mingled with the 
glow of the dying sunlight; she could hear the beat of the waves and 
the calls of the white sea-gulls wheeling above them. A boat drew 
near the shore, with milk-white sails, crowded with tall, strong angels, 
whose wings were folded on each side of them. She watched them idly 
sailing by, but as they passed she saw that at the farther end her mother 
sat with outstretched arms. On that she called out ; but the waves rose, 
and her voice was lost in their hissing. . . . 

Now it was night, and darkness was around her, the wind was rising 
into a storm, deep calling unto deep, and she was alone. The darkness 
thickened round her, and she was alone in a strange, desolate country ; 
but in a moment one came calling her by name and holding her by the 
hand. It was Victor, and as she clung to him the light came back once 
more; . . . but some one came between them and led him away, and 
she was alone. Then a strange terror fell on her — an inexpressible, unrea- 
soning, creeping fear ; a fear, not of death, nor of the ghastly legends 


i:he silent sea 


m 

that men tell each other with blanched faces of how the soul, ardent, 
conscious, full of love and hope and infinite tenderness, is plunged in a 
moment of time into eternal oblivion like the carcass of a stall-fed ox. 
The horror that had fallen on her was a horror of life — a shrinking in 
terror from the days full of gay sunshine, carrying away with them, like 
the petals of faded roses, all that the heart clings to, all that makes the 
world a place in which it is pleasant to dwell. 

She was in the midst of the Silent Sea — gray, voiceless, sinister, for- 
ever the same — and she was alone. In the sleep that had overtaken her, 
Doris knew for the first and last time what is symbolized by the word 
“ despair.” She looked with conscious eyes into those remorseless depths 
of being in which the bereavements of death are seen to be gentle and 
loving and merciful, as compared with the robberies of life. She could 
not cry ; but it was as though tears of flame were slowly falling one by 
one on her heart and consuming it within her. The whole world seemed 
full of mounds, overgrown with grass, beneath which human souls were 
dropping piecemeal into clods of dust ; and all around her the dead, som- 
bre colors of the Silent Sea — the gray, vague formlessness, the darkness 
on which no shadows could be cast. . . . How many, many hundred years 
had stealthily crept between her and the happy serenity of the days in 
which she had lived with her mother ! 

Her mother ! The word was like a spell. As she breathed it, moving 
uneasily in her sleep, the terrors that had overpowered her fell away one 
by one. They were not true, they were part of a mocking nightmare ; 
now she was awaking to the truth, and the truth was peace and blessed- 
ness, and light and healing. She heard a faint rustling, as of one draw- 
ing near her in flowing robes. Oh, joy unspeakable, and consolation 
never more to be wrested from her ! her mother had come to her ! Her 
arms were round her, her lips pressed on her cheek. 

“ Oh, maman, maman ! did you hear me — have you come for me f ’ 
she murmured in a happy whisper, and with that she looked up into her 
mother’s face. It was as gentle, as beautiful, as full of love, as real to 
her, as it had ever been. She waited in breathless eagerness for her 
mother’s answer. And her mother’s answer was to take her in her arms 
once more, and kiss her on her brow ; and then she awoke, her eyes wet 
with happy tears, her brow warm with her mother’s kiss. “That was 
her answer — I am going to her,” she said to herself half aloud. 

Then she knew that she had been asleep, that their journey had come 
to an end, that Kenneth stood talking to some one in the doorway of the 
hospital in which Victor was to be nursed. The wagon stood quite close 
to the front of it ; the tilt had been drawn aside, and the light was shin- 
ing in, so that she could see Victor’s face distinctly. As she looked at 
him he moved and murmured some words. She bent over him. “ Helen, 


298 


THE SILENT SEA 


you understand, don’t you he was saying in a troubled tone. But the 
sound of another woman’s name on his lips had now nothing of sorrow 
or fear for her. The bliss of her mother’s summoning kiss wrapped her 
round like a garment which could be penetrated no more by the darts of 
any self-regardful sorrow. 

“ Dear Victor, good-by ! God make you well and happy !” she mur- 
mured softly, stooping over him, and lightly touching his brow with 
her lips. He moved at the touch ; he seemed struggling to awake. 

‘‘ Darling, darling !” he said, half raising one of his hands. 

He is dreaming of Helen,” she thought. 

In that instant Kenneth came with two men, one holding a light, the 
other to help him to take the patient inside. It was all the work of a 
few moments, and then they were on their way back to the Half-way 
House. When they reached it Mrs. Challoner was still asleep ; only the 
landlord and one or two late travellers were astir. The landlord pressed 
them to stay for the night, as it was now ten o’clock. 

‘‘ The young lady looks so very pale ; I am afraid she is ill,” he said. 

But Kenneth, looking steadfastly at Doris, saw that her eyes were 
shining, as if her heart were full of happy thoughts. 

“ Miss Doris is often pale,” he replied ; and then he explained that he 
was pledged to set out on a long journey on the morrow, and that it 
would be better for Mrs. Challoner to travel in the cool of the night. 

So Mrs. Challoner was awakened from her long, sound sleep, and said 
she felt like a new creature. 

Early next day Kenneth departed. Doris, who had slept very fitfully, 
was up to say good-by to him. As he held her hands in his, they 
seemed to him very hot and dry. 

“ My dear Miss Doris, I hope the fever is not on you,” he said, look- 
ing into her face anxiously. Surely it was very pallid, and the shadows 
under her eyes very deep. Yet when she looked up at him there was 
that calm, exalted gladness in those wonderfully radiant eyes which had 
struck him on the previous night. 

“ I am well, thank you, Kenneth,” she answered, smiling at her old 
friend. “ Here is something I want you to keep always,” she added, 
giving him a small sandal-wood box. It held a large gold locket, with 
a photograph of her mother on one side and of herself on the other. 

Kenneth looked from one to the other. As he looked at Mrs. Lind- 
say he said, with the soft, pensive intonations which had always in them 
something of the solemnity of solitary musings, 

‘^Dear heart, sweet, gentle lady, of thee it might always be said, ‘God 
hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’ 
Now thou art among the companies of the blessed, enjoying the sweet- 
ness of the contemplation of the Father forever.” 


THE SILENT SEA 


299 


“ Kenneth, if you heard that I had gone to her, you would not think 
it was anything to grieve for, would you ?” asked Doris softly. 

“ No, dear child ; you have ever had one of those sweet and well-dis- 
posed natures which need little chastening to make them fit for the com- 
panionship of the sinless ones. . . . But though your life may be long in 
the land, something tells me we shall not meet again. To me the hour 
of my deliverance can never come amiss. Though we are drenched with 
matter, yet the better part of us faints oftentimes for converse with the 
spiritual world. If you return from over the sea and find that I am gone, 
you may know, dear Miss Doris, that what my soul longed for has come 
to pass.” 

During that and the following day the Challoner household were occu- 
pied with the manifold duties of their departure from the mine. Shung 
was, as usual, equal to two or three ordinary servants. But he kept a 
keen eye on his young mistress, and was more insistent than usual that 
she should spare herself all fatigue. One and another noticed her in- 
creasing silence, her lack of appetite, and an air of curious abstraction. 
It was a touch of the fever, they thought, and the doctor ratified the 
conclusion. It was a good thing they were going away, he said, for the 
change would most likely arrest the disease. At times she heard and 
saw nothing of what went on around her. A whole world lay between 
her and the accustomed familiar details of life. The wondering specula- 
tions, the absorbing thoughts, which had taken possession of her when 
her mother died, returned to her with overwhelming vividness. Only the 
sting of separation was wonderfully removed. The earth and all that it 
contained had come to wear to her the aspect of a scene in which she had 
no stake. 

The world was enclosed in a pearly light, shot through with golden 
sunbeams, the morning they left Nilpeena by the early train. Near mid- 
day they passed the confines of the Salt-bush country. The wide, shad- 
owy woods and softly swelling rises that succeeded the boundless horizons 
and arid monotony of that region exhilarated the spirits like an escape 
from captivity. Later they passed through districts full of great fields 
of wheat ripe for harvest. Flocks of sheep stood under the shade of old, 
spreading gum-trees, by permanent water-holes in the creeks ; herds of 
cattle were feeding leisurely in well-grassed paddocks ; enclosed hillsides 
were dotted with vineyards ; the township had their meanest habitations 
surrounded by fruit-trees, bending under loads of fruit. 

Almost every succeeding scene on the way was intimately associated 
in Doris’s mind with memories of her mother. They had made the 
journey so often together, that each little station at which they stopped, 
each township they passed, was perfectly familiar. To several dwell- 
ings, of which they caught merely brief glimpses in passing, Doris had 


300 the silent sea 

given names, had even fitted them with stories to which her mother lis- 
tened with smiling interest. 

‘‘ The boy that went away from Pear-blossom Farm to get rubies as big 
as eggs has come back, maman, and they have built a new room for him 
— see it there, at the end of the house !” Doris would say eagerly, point- 
ing out the new addition as they passed a house a little way off the rail- 
way line, surrounded by pear-trees, that in their season were clothed with 
a delicate splendor of blossom seldom equalled elsewhere. She had fallen 
asleep after looking out through the window all the morning, but as they 
passed this well-known spot she awoke from a quiet, happy dream, in 
which she heard her mother saying, 

We are too late for the blossoms this time, Doris ; but see how the 
trees are bending under their young pears !” 

She looked out at the window, and lo ! there was Pear-blossom Farm 
with another new room to it — a large one with a bow-window. 

‘‘What has happened now, maman?” she said, smiling softly. And 
then she remembered that her mother was no longer beside her. But 
the thought had no sting in it, till she averhefard some whispered words 
in the carriage. 

A guard, who on this route had often seen Mrs. Lindsay and her daugh- 
ter travelling together, came in to check the tickets. He looked at the 
young lady, now in black, and without her mother, and said something in 
a low voice to Challoner. “ Dead ?” Doris heard him repeat the word 
in a low, startled voice, and divining who was meant, her heart rose in 
rebellion against the thought. The things that had been for a short 
time so close and dear to her — these were dead ; they had fallen from 
her like the fruit-blossoms whose time is overpast. But her mother, 
whose welcoming, reassuring kiss had released her from all pangs of 
sorrow, when her hour of desolation had come in the very heart of the 
Silent Sea, ah, she had never died ! she had but “ awakened from the 
dream of life.” 

From the moment that Nature was once more around her in the dear, 
familiar aspects of beauty and fertility, the old, close bond between Doris 
and her mother was more strongly renewed : not so much through mem- 
ory, as a constant pervasive sense of communion which made all other 
interests dim, even a little unreal, in comparison. Not that she was 
indifferent, least of all to memories of that brief space during which an 
emotion more absorbing than she had ever felt before had overcome her. 
It was impossible to forget that, but she looked on it as something irrepa- 
rably past, while this quickening of the old life embraced almost the 
whole of her past, and would be linked with those coming experiences 
of which her chief forecasts came in dreams and long, silent reveries. 

“Does your head ache, dear? Are you very tired?” Mrs. Challoner 


THE SILENT SEA 


301 


asked repeatedly during the latter part of the journey, and to all inqui- 
ries Doris answered that she was very well. 

They were met at the railway-station by those old friends of Mrs. 
Lindsay who had written to ask Doris to stay with them in the early 
days of her bereavement. She now gladly consented to visit them for a 
week or ten days, according to the date at which Mr. Challoner’s health 
enabled them to leave the colony. Her first care the next day was to 
send Shung to post a short letter she had written to Victor the day be- 
fore she left Stonehouse, intending to send it that same evening ; but it 
had been somehow overlooked. As Kenneth had said nothing of the 
invalid he had taken to the private hospital, Doris also maintained silence 
on the point. She felt sure that Victor’s presence in the district under 
such strange circumstances, after his supposed departure by ship from 
Port Pellew, would lead to much wonder, very likely to much blame; 
and blame for him she could not bear. She was not given to analyzing 
her thoughts, but even in their unprobed recesses there was no shade of 
anger against Victor. Though she felt there was something strange, 
something she could not comprehend, in what had happened, yet she 
did not pass any judgment. And what is life that we should moan ? 
Why make we such ado ?” These words, marked by her mother’s hand 
years before, now seemed to sum up all. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

It was on the sixth day after her return from Colombo that Miss 
Paget heard the first rumor of Victor’s abrupt departure for England or 
the Cape of Good Hope. There seemed to be a difference of opinion as 
to his destination even among those who knew the most, and in the end 
she found that no one knew very much except by implication. It was 
at a garden-party she heard the tidings — at the same house and near 
the self-same spot on which Victor three months before had charged her 
with inventing melancholy. 

The entertainment was given in honor of a German nobleman who 
had travelled all over the Old World and the New, chiefly with the result 
of proving that cosmopolitan dining did not impair his digestion. The 
house was moderately old, as age is reckoned in Australia, and the sur- 
roundings picturesque. The sea was quite near, and the grounds laid 
out in lawns, and numerous walks lined with old-world trees mingled 
with those of native growth. There were winding lanes almost buried 
in shrubs and creepers, and the daintily trimmed lawns were sprinkled 


302 


THE SILENT SEA 


with dwarf yellow honeysuckles, scented verbena, daphne bushes, and 
many others of the perfume-breathing kind. It was a warm day about 
the middle of December, and the sunshine seemed to extract their inmost 
essences from flowers and leaves, so that the air was loaded with per- 
fume which, in places, might be too heavy, were it not for the fresh, 
keen savor of the sea-breezes. 

Miss Paget, with her father and Professor Codrington, were among 
the last to arrive. 

“ It is all the fault of the Delphin Ordon,” she said, excusing herself 
to the hostess smilingly. “ Oh, don’t ask me what it is ! I only know 
it is shelves of old books, over which learned old gentlemen cannot 
keep the peace.” 

“But Professor Codrington is not as old as your father, Helen,” re- 
turned the hostess, with a meaning smile, which made Miss Paget feel 
sure that already the pundit’s mild infatuation for herself was the subject 
of gossip ; for it was a fact that his intimacy with Miss Paget opened 
the professor’s mind for the first time to the thought that to form the 
subject of equivocal odes in the dead languages was not woman’s sole 
function. 

There were over three hundred people present, not counting the large 
blond count who was the centre of attraction. Miss Paget, after chat- 
ting with a group of ladies near the hostess, passed on with her father 
and his friend, talking to scores of people, many of whom they saw for 
the first time since their return. There was a band playing, and on 
every side much talk and laughter. Miss Paget, in one of her most be- 
coming gowns, and with a constant succession of smiles, did honor to 
the occasion. But any one observing her closely would have noticed an 
expression of anxious scrutiny, of inquiring observation, in her face, as 
she looked round her from time to time. 

Would Victor make his appearance perhaps to-day? If not, she 
would, at any rate, surely fall in with some one who could perhaps 
throw light on what was beginning to look like a mystery, and which, 
whether it was a mystery or not, filled her with insupportable apprehen- 
sions. Victor’s telegram, saying that he would be in town on the even- 
ing of the day she landed, had awaited her on reaching home. It had 
been sent after his telegram to her at King George’s Sound. She looked 
for him to come on Saturday evening, after the arrival of the late north 
train. But he neither came nor sent. On Sunday she made an excuse 
of not feeling well, and stayed at home from church, thinking he might 
turn up at any moment. Had something detained him at the mine? 
Or was he ill? Or — yes, she had said to herself repeatedly during the 
past few weeks that a certain change had come over Victor’s letters; 
and the thought was confirmed when she found that there was nothing 


THE SILENT SEA 


303 


beyond a telegram for her at the Sound. But then it was delightful that 
he should hurry down the very day she returned. And she resolved that 
she would show all the joy she felt. She would voluntarily shorten the 
time of probation, and their engagement would be announced forthwith 
— that is, if there was nothing wrong ; and if there was — She did not 
try to face the alternative. I suppose I shall pull through somehow,” 
she thought, and the words fairly express the history of the succeeding 
days of strained suspense. 

She had shoals of visitors, and a rush of all sorts of social engagements. 
On the Tuesday succeeding their return, her father spent hours with her 
arranging a list of the friends he wished to be asked to a succession of 
small dinner-parties, to meet Professor Codrington, before they went 
away to Port Callunga for their annual stay at the seaside. Though 
Mr. Paget thought that he was easily bored, his partiality for this form 
of entertainment in his own house, under his daughter’s careful super- 
vision, had, up to this, resisted the combined inroads of age, dulness, and 
monotony. 

There were the momentous questions as to the relations between cer- 
tain people — as to the advisability of asking two men at once, otherwise 
suitable, but whose wives conspired in being so immovably stupid that no 
party of ten could survive such absolute dead-weights, etc., ad infinitum. 
Then there was the even more important task of deciding on soups 
and entrees and wines to suit the company. It seemed as if the discus- 
sion would never, never come to an end. Yet Miss Paget did not flinch, 
though each time the door-bell rang, or the sound of footsteps passed 
the half-open door of the morning-room, in which this domestic conclave 
was held, her heart was in her throat with the question, “ Is it Victor ?” 

‘‘ My dear Helen, why do you persist in having the door open ?” her 
father cried at last in a tone of irritation, seeing her eyes fastened on it 
when there was a subdued murmur of voices in the hall. ‘‘It is almost 
the sole point in which you seem to betray your Australian origin,” pur- 
sued Mr. Paget, who felt that the subject was serious enough to call for 
a digression from the point in hand. “ Professor Codrington said only 
the other day that in your society he quite lost sight of your not being 
English-born.” 

At another time Miss Paget would doubtless have indulged in some 
mental or audible remark as to the comic inability under which Professor 
Codrington, like the majority of the deeply respectable middle classes, 
labored, of being absolutely unable to imagine people are civilized in a 
country not even mentioned in their parents’ geographies. But just 
then she merely said, with the greatest meekness, 

“ Did he, papa ? I am glad ; for I am sure it would worry him to 
have one different from the people he is used to. . . . But about the 


304 


THE SILENT SEA 


door. I would sooner have it a little ajar, if you do not mind much. 
I find it so close ; I seem to need more air these last few days — as if I 
had a little touch of fever.” 

Mr. Paget involuntarily drew bach. 

“ I hope to goodness, Helen, you are not going to fall ill with all these 
arrangements on hand. I wish you would let that maid who has been 
taken ill go to the hospital !” 

‘‘ I assure you, papa, that has nothing to do with it. It is chiefly my 
throat ; it sometimes ails a little like this in the early summer.” 

Her father resumed his suggestions and instructions, and Miss Paget 
did not allow her eyes to wander again towards the door. But when 
the conference was over she went out and took a cab off the nearest 
stand, and went into the general post-ofl5ce in the city, and sent a mes- 
sage to Victor at the Colmar : “ Have you been unable to leave ? Please 
send an Immediate answer.” That was all, beside her name and address. 
The reply came as they were leaving to go to the theatre. It was from 
the post and telegraph master at Colmar, with whom Victor had been 
on very friendly terms, and the answer was : ‘‘ Mr. Fitz-Gibbon left here 
early on Friday morning.” 

“ Is that from any one unable to come to dinner to-morrow, Helen ?” 
said her father, after they got into the carriage. 

“ Oh, no, papa ; it’s a mere bagatelle — nothing so important as that,” 
she managed to say with a smile, and all the time her heart was throb- 
bing like the throat of a singing bird. Oh, how sick she was getting of 
this double life, and of everything around her*, the great situations in 
dramas, which produce an immense effect, and the small situations in 
life, that make no outward change at all, and yet paralyze the very 
springs of action. 

On the next day, Wednesday, they had their first dinner-party — seven 
of their most intimate neighbors. Mrs. Tillotson was not among the 
number. Her daughter Jane had influenza, and the good lady was 
waging an internecine strife with the nurse and the doctor on the sub- 
ject of antipyrine, reading extracts to the patient out of the wrong 
'magazines, and goading her son-in-law to desperation, by imploring him 
each morning at breakfast, and every evening at dinner, to have new 
and more enlightened advice as to the state of his lungs. 

“ Yes, my dear, Jane, I am glad to say, is a little better. What it has 
cost me to save her from being the victim of antipyrine I would not 
like to tell you ! However, I have the consolation of having done my 
duty, and I am coming home to-morrow,” she said to Helen, when they 
met at the garden-party on Thursday, where here and there, through the 
vistas of shadowy foliage, shimmering expanses of the Southern Ocean 
caught the eye. 


THE SILENT SEA 


305 


It was on a slight rise at the end of an elm avenue, commanding one 
of these views, that Miss Paget first caught sight of Mrs. Tillotson, sit- 
ting with another old friend on a rustic bench under a big gum-tree. 

You must tell me all the news — you know how hungry one is for 
news after being away so long,” said Miss Paget, who had been fever- 
ishly anxious to see Mrs. Tillotson, feeling sure she would be one of the 
first to hear if anything strange or unusual had happened to “ Mrs. Fitz- 
Gibbon’s boy.” But she did not mention his name. She made Helen 
sit down beside her, and drenched her with showers of vapid twaddle, 
or what seemed so to her listener, who was indeed tired to death of per- 
plexity and doubt and wonder. Once or twice she essayed to say in a 
careless tone, “ I wonder whether Victor Fitz-Gibbon is still at the mine;” 
but after saying ‘‘I wonder,” she gave the sentence a new turn, and the 
longer she delayed, the more impossible it became to utter the words 
without a violent effort or betraying too much emotion. 

All through the, previous evening she had felt that she might at any 
moment step out of the room from her smiling guests, into one adjacent, 
to meet the tragedy of her life. , . . “ A tragedy only to myself, no 
matter what happens,” she thought. To these people, to every one else, 
it would be a story to smile and wink over. A woman of her years 
breaking her heart over a boy just out of his teens ! She cherished no 
illusions — she did not spare herself — but this did not lessen the pangs 
she endured. She had come out to-day determined in some way to end 
the suspense — to ask any one or every one who would be likely to know. 

“ But at least he has not been killed or had a bad accident — there 
would be a paragraph in the papers,” she said to herself, as the two old 
friends between whom she sat gossiped on, and she sat staring at some 
white-sailed boats on the blue waves at the end of the avenue, motion- 
less, as if asleep, with the shadow looking exactly like the substance, 
even to the tear at the tip of one of the sails. She knew the scene was 
one over which some people would rave as being very beautiful, but 
there was not a fibre of her nature that vibrated to its charm. It gave 
her rather a feeling akin to repulsion, almost one of helpless terror, like 
the presence of a great, serene, implacable force profoundly indifferent to 
the sorrows and destinies of human beings. 

She saw her father and Professor Codrington walking towards a 
marquee, near which the band was playing. She thought of asking her 
two old friends to go in a devious direction towards the same centre, on 
the chance of meeting some one who would know something of Victor, 
of meeting himself, perhaps. At that moment some words spoken 
between two ladies, who had met just behind the rustic bench on which 
she sat, caught her ear. 

Gone away in a sailing-ship ? Didn’t he write to tell any one 
20 


306 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ No, not a word. In fact, none of us in town knew he had left the 
mine till father heard from the captain — you know they call the men 
who manage the mines captains. Ah, how do you do, dear? Isn’t it 
too lovely? The band, and the views, and the count — such a droll 
creature! , • . I. hear he speaks every known tongue.” 

‘‘ Ah, the version I heard is that he eats every known tongue, down 
, to that of a jew-lizard, and you know what used to be his waist is on my 
side of the story.” 

Miss Paget had risen on catching the first words about one who “ had 
gone away in a sailing-ship.” The speaker, as she had divined by the 
voice, was Miss Stuart Drummond, talking to two or three other young 
ladies. The new-comer was Miss Mason, of Victor’s elder brother. 

She caught sight of Miss Paget, and came forward to speak to her. 

“ Doesn’t the sea look exquisite just from this point of view ?” said 
Miss Paget, leading her a little away from the rest. She had not seen 
them, but a troop of sea-gulls opposite the avenue vista, circling widely 
over some booty of the waves, with outspread snowy pinions and faint, 
complaining calls, gave a special point to the scene. Miss Mason, feeling 
she was expected to admire it all, made some polite remarks and then 
spoke of Colombo. Miss Paget must have enjoyed it very much, and 
then the getting home was always so nice. Wasn’t it while she was 
away that poor, dear old Mrs. Ridley died so suddenly ? 

“ Yes, and do you know since I came here I heard a curious little 
rumor — ” 

“ Oh, about Victor Fitz-Gibbon? Isn’t it the most curious affair? 
but it can only be some whim, you know. There is nothing whatever 
amiss to account for it, as is so often the case when people go off like 
that, without saying a word to any one.” 

Miss Paget had rightly judged that Miss Mason would know all there 
was to tell. She went over in detail all that had been learned, and what 
Lance said and thought. Victor had written indefinitely of coming to 
town before Christmas. 

“We thought when he came down that he would be sure not to go 
back again, for, after all, it was a little absurd, his going there at all. 
And now he won’t be at our wedding.” 

“ It is to be soon ?” 

“ In three or four weeks,” answered the girl with a dimpling smile ; 
“ and Victor was to be groomsman. Oh, I shall scold him ! You 
know Lance is almost sure he must have written, and that the letters 
were somehow lost — perhaps intrusted to some ‘sundowner,’ like poor 
old Bertie Grayson’s letters, when he wasn’t heard of from that station 
beyond anywhere for months and mouths. As it is, no one had a letter 
from him but the manager of the mine,” 


THE SILENT SEA 


30V 


The theory of lost letters was confirmed by Miss Paget^s own experi- 
ence, though she could not make use of the confirmation. But it did 
not seem to be much needed. None of his people were greatly dis- 
quieted, only amazed, and a little inclined to be vexed at him. 

“ If his mother were here, you know, she would be distracted ; but 
we others take it calmly enough,” Lance Fitz-Gibbon explained to Miss 
Paget a few minutes later. “But I don’t suppose it would have hap- 
pened if the mater were at home,” he added ; “ indeed, I sometimes 
think perhaps it was on account of some letter from her he went. I 
found out that the English mail had been delivered the day before he 
left. Only why go by a tub of a sailing-vessel, and from Port Pellew ? 
It seems as if the boy had determined on something, and wanted to 
avoid all the bother and fuss of talking it over with people.” 

“ He wrote nothing to you in a letter, then, or anything of that sort?” 

“ Not a syllable. We didn’t write to each other very often, you know. 
I had some idea of having an inquiry made, but uncle pooh-poohed 
the thought, as everything was so clear — his letter posted to the mine- 
manager, and his letters and cards left at the inn.” It was more the 
anxious, questioning look in Miss Paget’s face that made Fitz-Gibbon 
go over these details than any real anxiety in his own mind. She was 
at first too startled to adopt the explanation supported by everything 
except direct proof. Afterwards it amazed her that she should in so 
short a time adopt the suggestion that, strange as Victor’s abrupt de- 
parture was, yet it afforded no reasonable ground for anxiety. Of her 
own special reasons for lying awake at night, and getting up restlessly 
before dawn kindled the sky, of growing pale and losing her appetite, 
she was, of course, mute as the dead. 

On the second day after hearing the news Miss Paget horrified herself 
by going into a fit of violent hysterics for the first time in her life. The 
servants’ wonder, her father’s shocked amazement, and his insistence in 
sending for his doctor and explaining that his daughter had sobbed and 
cried at the pitch of her voice as she had never done in childhood — all 
were details full of such keen annoyance that for a short time she could 
think of nothing else. She took herself to task severely for succumbing 
too easily to those fears that had been in the background from the first. 
Henceforth, amid the conflict of her thoughts, she clung to the belief 
that Victor could not have gone as he did without some good reason 
altogether unconnected with her, and that no reason would have induced 
him to go without writing to her. His letter was lost, and until further tid- 
ings came she would not allow her fears and doubts to gain the upper hand. 

She bent herself resolutely to a disposal of her days that would leave 
no idle moments. She gave more of her time to household duties, try- 
ing to win back some of the old, girlish sense of elation in the perfect 


308 


THE SILENT SEA 


order and completeness of the household of which she was mistress; 
going oftener into the great, bright, airy kitchen, with its tiled walls and 
floor of spotless purity, its gleaming utensils of plated ware and copper 
and agate, and its wide range, so perfectly adjusted that it would almost 
cook of itself. She supervised some repairs to the servants’ rooms, with 
their pretty outlooks, and flowers growing at the windows. She went 
now and then, as in olden times, for a chat with them in their sitting- 
room, into which she had conveyed so many artistic knick-knacks, till 
some of her older friends solemnly warned her against making her ser- 
vants’ lives so luxurious that they would be unfitted for their own sphere 
in life. Had she ever undertaken anything in which some danger was 
not found to lurk ? But all other dangers, real or imaginary, sank into 
insignificance compared to this, of finding her whole life made waste and 
void by centring all its vital interests on an unrequited attachment. It 
was with a sort of vague terror of this that she took up her old pursuits 
with increased zeal and method. 

She went more frequently to charity meetings, visited the destitute 
asylum and the hospitals and the suffering poor with steadfast regu- 
larity. And then all during the first week after she learned the inex- 
plicable tidings of Victor’s departure there was the succession of dinner- 
parties, which claimed so much attention. 

The stir in the household created by such parties, the sound of beat- 
ing and pounding, the fragrant essences and condiments that impreg- 
nated the atmosphere, the savor of roasts and joints, of sauces and dainty 
soups, often affected her with a feeling that amounted to nausea. But 
she went through all the duties of a careful hostess with relentless exacti- 
tude. She tripped down the broad stairs, shimmering in delicate sum- 
mery fabrics, to await her guests, and said the right things at the right 
moment as seriously as if the dearest aim of her being was compassed, 
when, on bidding her father good-night, he said, “ Well, Helen, I think 
our little party went off very well.” And, as a matter of fact, she tried 
very hard to make herself realize that in the midst of so much that was 
maimed and spoiled in the world through sheer poverty, the rich, flexible, 
delicately adorned aspects of life had a distinct value of their own. 

And thus somehow time wore on till nineteen days had passed from 
the one on which Miss Paget heard the news of Victor’s departure. 
And now it was the second of January, ghe had for the first time evaded 
the annual sojourn with her father at Port Callunga — at least, for the 
first four weeks. It was possible for her to do this without incommod- 
ing him, because Professor Codrington bore him company, and the older 
and more experienced servants could be relied on to do everything for 
their material comfort. Their mental harmony must largely depend on 
their conclusions regarding the Cretic and tetrameter-iambic metres. 


THE SILENT SEA 


309 


Miss Paget felt that the seclusion of Port Callunga, with its beautiful 
monotony and the unbroken loneliness of sea-shore, would be more than 
she could bear, while she watched and waited for tidings, and counted 
the days till it would be possible to get a cablegram from Victor. The 
serious illness of one of the maids gave her suflScient excuse for staying 
at Lancaster House, and her father agreed to the arrangement \^^th that 
docility which always characterized him when neither his pursuits nor 
his dinners were threatened by the vagaries of man or woman kind. 

“ But about Mrs. Tillotson, Helen he said, a few days before his de- 
parture. “ I would not like to say anything unkind ; but without you 
to listen to her fears about her investments and her sons-in-law — ” 

“ Of course Mrs. Tillotson stays with me, papa. Why ” — with a rising 
smile — “ I am not quite sure that it would be proper for her to go with 
you and Professor Codrington and all those reckless metres.” 

Since she was left a widow six years previously, Mrs. Tillotson had 
spent part of most summers with the Pagets at the sea-side. But she, 
too, found reasons for being better contented to stay just then at Lan- 
caster House, instead of going to Callunga. She had let her house 
furnished at an exorbitantly high rent to a newly enriched Silver King, 
and she wanted to keep an eye on the premises. Then Jane was really 
very delicate, though George would not or could not see it, nor take any 
steps to go aw^ay for part of the summer. But she, at least, had her eyes 
open, and would try to do her duty, and her duty was not to be beyond 
reach if Jane should want her. ... As for Matilda, she was so taken 
up with embroidering altar-cloths, and so devoured with grief at the 
spread of “ heresy,” that a mere mother hardly counted in her life at 
all. . . . But George was more like a ghost than ever, and if he really 
became one, no doubt Jane would remember that her mother was still 
living. And then there were those Banjoewangie shares. She had im- 
plored Richard to put the last money that fell in from mortgages into 
something that would be quite, quite safe, and now, after paying such 
high dividends, these shares were steadily going down. That was so 
often the way with mines after they had been worked for a little time. 

Mrs. Tillotson’s first care each morning was to glance over the share- 
lists in the daily papers, and her spirits would rise and fall with the 
Banjoew^angies in a way that Miss Paget would no doubt have found 
trying if she had not been partly oblivious of the matter. As long as 
her companion put in a sympathetic monosyllable now and then, Mrs. 
Tillotson gently pottered on in the manner of an insensitive, self-involved, 
garrulous woman, who takes no impression from any personality foreign 
to her own. Each day furnished her with events, visits, and conversa- 
tions that kept her in a gentle simmer of indolent activity. 

On the date mentioned, the two sat on a veranda overlooking a 


310 


THE SILENT SEA 


shadowy part of the lawn, at two o’clock in the afternoon, when Lance 
Fitz-Gibbon came in through the side gate. On seeing him Miss Paget 
turned very pale. 

“ You will be surprised at my errand,” he said, by way of preparing 
her, when she had stepped in with him to a morning room that opened 
on the veranda. 

She murmured something by way of reply, and then he handed her a 
little note. The lines were wavering and uncertain, but not more so than 
her sight. When the letters ceased to dance before her eyes, she read 
these words : 

“ Dear Helen, — Can you come to me at once? The journey has knocked me up 
so much that Lance insists on my resting. Yours, Victor.” 

‘‘ He is at the house in which I lodge, less than half a mile away,” 
Fitz-Gibbon said, meeting her eyes as she looked up in hopeless bewilder- 
ment, after slowly reading this note the second time through. 

To get a hat and pair of gloves and a sunshade, to excuse her absence 
to Mrs. Tillotson for an hour or so, and to find herself walking rapidly 
beside Fitz-Gibbon to his lodgings in Jeffrey Street, was the work of a 
few minutes. On the way he told her all he knew. Four days ago a 
telegram came to him from the Broombush Creek private hospital from 
Victor, saying he was well enough to travel. He had started for the 
diggings at once, and returned by the first north train that day. Victor 
insisted on travelling straight through, and wished to drive to Lancaster 
House direct from the railway-station, which Fitz-Gibbon had prevented 
his doing by promising that he would at once bring Miss Paget to him. 

They had reached the house before Miss Paget comprehended that the 
report of Victor’s departure from Port Pellew was absolutely untrue — 
that he had been hurt, and lying in some place unknown to him for two 
weeks, according to the date of his admission to the hospital, whither he 
was taken by some person in a hawker’s wagon. He had been uncon- 
scious for days in the hospital, and for days, when he tried to explain 
where he had been and how he had been hurt, his talk was taken to be 
the delirium of fever. Indeed, he was not free from fever now. It 
would be better to postpone talking of the mysterious events, as far as 
possible, till he was stronger. They had telegraphed to the mine-man- 
ager, and were going to put the matter in the hands of the police. 

Miss Paget listened as if she were walking in a dream. But amid 
all the confusion and inexplicable mystery, one thought rose up clear and 
beautiful as a star. His first anxiety was to see her. The weary, endless 
days of strained perplexity and harassing uncertainty had tried her more 
than she herself knew. Now it was as though a great load were sud- 
denly taken off, but as if she were too weak and weary from the 


THE SILENT SEA 


311 


burden to feel greatly relieved. But soon she would be rested, and 
able to rejoice that her dismal apprehensions and mistrusts were over 
and past. 

But even as she waited in the drawing-room, while Fitz-Gibbon went 
to tell Victor that she had come, a feeling of exquisite happiness stole 
over her. 

Oh, God, I thank thee ! — it is more happiness than I have dared to 
hope for!” were the words that rose in her heart. . . . The next moment 
she was following Fitz-Gibbon into the room in which Victor was resting. 


CHAPTER XL. 

He was in a dressing-gown in a half-sitting position on a couch, 
awaiting her with a look of such eager expectancy on his face that Miss 
Paget’s first feeling was one of quick joy. 

“ Helen, where is she were his first words. 

“ Who, dear Victor ?” 

Doris.” 

‘‘ Doris?” 

Yes.” 

I— I—” 

“ Oh, Helen, don’t say you do not know 1” 

“ But what can I say ?” 

“ You know nothing of her; you have not seen her?” 

“ I never knew any one of that name.” 

“ And I made so sure — oh, so sure — ” 

He pressed his hands against his temples, and lay back with half- 
closed eyes, with an expression of intense chagrin. 

“ What did you make sure of, Victor ?” 

“ That you had seen her, and then that Doris had written — that you 
knew where she was.” 

‘‘ You have been very ill, dear.” 

“ 111 ? I have been in hell — down low in the innermost circle I” 

“ And you are far from well yet, Victor.” 

“Just five days ago, after what seemed long years of darkness and 
ceaseless struggle, I woke up. Everything was unreal. Then I got her 
letter. Oh, Helen, think of it ! My poor darling believes that I do not 
love her as she thought.” 

Miss Paget’s hands were so tightly clenched that her nails made livid 
dents in the delicate flesh. 


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THE SILENT SEA 


“ But who, then, could have told Doris ? Who else knew but our 
two selves?” 

“ Knew what, Victor? I am afraid your head is — ” 

“ Yes, it is whirling in chaos. But I have one thing to steady me — 
one thing to hold by. It is not all blank confusion. Only the thought 
that she may be sailing away. . . . Oh, it is too intolerable !” 

Victor turned away with a movement of extreme impatience, and lay 
back, looking weak and spent. His face was white and thin, his eyes 
looking unnaturally large and hollow. Miss Paget noticed that they 
glittered with excitement when he spoke, and that, until overcome with 
exhaustion, there was a vehemence of emotion in his face and voice she 
had never seen in them before. This, coupled with his strange conduct 
and inexplicable speech, gave her a quick thrill of fear. Was it the de- 
lirium of fever or of a more fixed and dangerous aberration ? 

“ Dear Victor, what is it that distresses you ? Is it any news of your 
mother, or — ” 

“ No, no, no ! It is Doris — my Doris ! She has gone away. I must 
find her. She must know the truth . . . and perhaps she is sailing 
away to the other side of the world !” 

No ; never before had Miss Paget seen him touched with this absorb- 
ing intensity. But here a sudden chill fell on her — a doubt that his 
mysterious words did not spring from imaginary events or a disordered 
brain. 

Doris ! My Doris !” What could these words signify ? The first 
dread that Victor’s mind was temporarily unhinged gave place to the 
dread that it was not. Yet she tried to hope against hope — to lead 
him from the feverish thoughts that had taken hold of him. She 
spoke in the soothing tones in which Cue seeks to pacify an irritable 
child, 

All these days we have been thinking of you as on your way to 
England ; but now you are safe here.” 

“ Good heavens ! what fantastical notions you have all got hold of !” 
he cried, pressing his hands once more against his temples. ‘‘ I made 
so sure you would know something about Doris. Not that you would 
have made her believe I did not love her. You would have understood 
it all. The last time I saw her was a few hours before I was made in- 
sensible. ... I was coming to you, Helen, to tell you all.” 

Miss Paget drew her breath in suddenly. For a little it seemed as if 
she were spending her last breath in holding herself above billows break- 
ing stormily round her head. 

Yet only a very short pause elapsed before she said in a calm, even 
voice, 

“ What were you coming to tell me, Victor ?” 


THE SILENT SEA 


313 


Again there was silence in the room for a short time. Victor had 
turned his head aside, and Miss Paget saw that his eyelashes were 
wet. 

In that moment, had it been in her power, she would have restored to 
him without a moment’s hesitation the lost love who had so entirely 
effaced her own claim that he seemed to have forgotten its existence. 
But as the first tumult of bitter disappointment subsided, the past re- 
turned to him in clearer proportions. 

‘‘ You were wiser than I was, Helen, when I thought I loved you well 
enough to ask you to be my wife.” 

“ Tell me about it now, Victor ... all you were coming to tell me 
when these strange things happened,” she said, stroking his thin, hot 
fingers with her cool, firm hand. 

And by degrees she heard the story — the old, simple, ever-new and 
imperishable idyll of two young human hearts who found in each other 
the happiness and completion of their being. 

“ No one knew but our two selves. ... I did not mean to speak till 
I had told you. ... I would have come at once to you . . . only you 
were away. . . . But I was glad to remember that from the first you 
thought my affection was a boyish folly. . . .” 

“Yes, I thought it was not likely to last,” she said with her invincible 
little smile — a smile which mentally she considered equalled Mdlle. Car- 
dinale’s most signal feat of balancing in the air. 

“ I am glad now that you did not really love me in that way.” 

“ Now, how clever it was of you to find that out,” she said, shifting 
one of the cushions to make his head more comfortable. 

“ I don’t think I did quite find it out, Helen, till I was really in love 
myself,” he answered slowly. He raised one of her hands to his lips, 
and added, “ I knew you would understand how it all happened.” 

The words hurt her horribly. But beyond speaking in a very low 
voice, she betrayed no emotion as she replied, 

“ Yes, I think I quite understand, Victor.” 

The longer she was with him, the more she realized that his hurt, and 
the bitter disappointment which had come to him with the recovery 
of full consciousness, had for the time entirely changed him, making 
him self-engrossed, impatient, and profoundly melancholy. It was an 
effort of memory to recall his face as she had last seen it, beaming with 
health and boyish gayety, with every thought tuned by that love of the 
bright side of life which seemed doubly his by temperament as well as 
youth. 

But there was no effort of memory required to make her realize that 
nothing— nothing made any difference to the place he held in her heart. 
“ Oh, thank Heaven, no one knows — no one ever will know !” she said 


814 


THE SILENT SEA 


to herself, bending her head as it all rose before her, bringing a hot, 
sudden flame into her face. The steadfast, unalterable vehemence of her 
feelings, notwithstanding that the fears which had from the first beset 
her were now certainties, was the last drop in her cup of bitterness. . . . 
She recalled stories that had come to her knowledge, of women who 
had clung to men even when they had outraged every instinct of hu- 
manity. Love, which, according to the poets, should exalt and trans- 
figure human beings, did it not in reality as often humiliate and disgrace 
them, and render them recklessly egoistic ? But she had always known 
the poets were dealers in pretty fables and baseless lies. 

‘‘ At least there are some depths of humiliation I shall be spared,” she 
thought bitterly, as she glanced at Victor’s face. Sombre and changed 
it might be, but it would never bear traces of cruelty and deceit and 
shameless self-indulgence. 

During the short silence in which these reflections passed through 
Miss Paget’s mind, Victor had drawn a little letter from an inner pocket 
in his dressing-gown. 

“ It is all so awfully mixed up, Helen,” he said, his voice weak from 
mental and physical weariness. You may be wondering why I made 
so sure you would know something about Doris. . . . Well, I will give 
you her precious little letter to read. I got it the last thmg as I was 
leaving the hospital. The doctor had it for a day or two, I think. He 
said I had been drugged after being hurt, and must be kept perfectly 
calm. At first he would do nothing I told him, only try to keep me 
quiet. It was only when a telegram came from Lance, in answer to one 
I bribed the wardsman to send, that the doctor believed a word of what 
I said. . . . ‘Delirium — all delirium,’ he kept on muttering, till one 
day I flung my boot at him ; and after that he said it was a case of 
acute madness.” 

“ Poor, dear Victor ! Then may I look at this letter ?” 

“ Yes ; please read it to me slowly aloud, Helen.” 

Miss Paget took the note and read : 

“ ‘ My dear Victor, — To-morrow we are leaving — * 

“ You see, Helen, there is nothing to show whether it was the mine 
or Adelaide. I sent a telegram to Trevaskis on the journey down, and 
instead of giving me a date, he merely telegraphed that the Challoners 
had left some days ago to take ship for England.” 

“ Then we can look up the shipping intelligence, and find out from 
that — or some of the agents,” said Miss Paget. 

“ Oh, yes, yes ! this very day. I knew you would help me. I seem 
to have lost all power of thought.” 

Miss Paget resumed: 


vTHE SILENT SEA 


315 

“ ‘ And I want to say good-by, and to thank you for all your kindness ; I will never 
forget it.’” 

Victor gave a great sigh that was almost a groan, and made an effort 
to get up. 

“ What now, Victor ?” said Miss Paget, who was holding the letter on 
her lap, so that the tremulousness of her hand should not be noticed — 
an unnecessary precaution. 

“What now?” he repeated. “I want to go away. I want to find out 
where Doris is, and, if she has sailed, to take the next ship. Why, there 
may be one starting now ! My kindness to her. . . . Good God ! as if 
I would not lay down my life to save her a pang! . . . And all this 
time she thinks. . . . Helen, why don’t you go on ? But I know I 
interrupted you. I won’t say another word till you finish.” 

To lessen the temptations of breaking this promise. Miss Paget read 
to the end rapidly, not pausing if any word or sentence drew an im- 
patient sigh or a low exclamation from her listener : 

“ ‘ I think, dear Victor, I must have made a mistake as to some things you said I 

mean, in the way you love me. I do not blame you, for I am sure there is some ex- 
planation I cannot guess, and I am afraid you were unhappy when you went away so 
that we shouldn’t know where you were. Perhaps that is why you fell ill, and had to 
be nursed near the broken-down whim. 

“‘Mother and I lived so much alone, and were so very, very dear to each other. 
But even with maman there were a great many things she did not explain to me. . . . 
Once when we were returning from town we travelled with Koroona — the girl I told 
you about — mother was so angel-kind to every one, yet she would never take me to 
see Koroona at Noomooloo, and Koroona was never at our place till she came flying 
out of the woods that terrible evening. . . . Often, too, when mother was talking to 
Mrs. Murray or Mrs. Challoner, or even some of the poor splitters’ wives, she would 
speak in a low voice and look at me ; or other times I would come in from the garden, 
and they would speak of something else. One day, not very long before we parted, 
I asked mother why there were so many things she did not explain to me, and she 
said I was not old enough yet to understand. . . . And this is another of these many 
things. . . . But you must soon get well, and go to Helen and be happy.’ ” 

Miss Paget drew a deep breath at the mention of her own name. 
Victor’s face was very pale and set, but he offered no interruption. 

“ ‘ I think I shall write one letter to you from France, to know how you are. This 
is a real letter — not like the little make-believe one when you let me practise so that 
I might write to Raoul. . . . But that would be quite different, for I know you and 
love you so much better. I hope you will not think I am vexed or unhappy. I will 
tell you a secret : darling maman now seems quite near me all the time, as if she 
had in some way come in place of what made me so happy without her. . . . I am 
glad you got so many beautiful flowers for me, for flowers will always speak to me of 
you, and remind me of the great pleasure they gave to the sick children. Poor little 
dears ! they were starved for beautiful things, and there is nothing in all the world 
more beautiful than flowers, except the swallows flying. ... I am glad you are now 
in a place where you will be nursed well from the fever. I pray for you every day. 

“ ‘ I am, dear Victor, Your faithful friend, ^ < Dorts! ’ » 


316 


THE SILENT SEA 

‘‘ ‘ Go to Helen and be happy !’ When I read that I made sure that 
in some way you had met Doris here,” said Victor, speaking in a dull 
tone. No one else, except, perhaps, Mrs. Tillotson, knows.” 

“ She does not know — no one knows from me,” replied Miss Paget, 
who, in the midst of a whirl of confused thoughts, discerned one thing 
clearly : this letter, in its girlish simplicity and uncomplaining renuncia- 
tion, in some way inspired her with new hopes and confidence. Only, 
if she had really gone, would Victor at once follow, or would he wait 
till the delirium of fever left him sane and collected ? She insisted on 
his taking a little wine before he tried to give her some idea of all that 
remained with him of the past strange days. 

He drank almost a wineglassful, and as soon as he was strengthened 
by its reviving influence he became more excitable and unreasonable. 
Why was he being kept like this, inactive ? Why was not Lance doing 
something ? The first thing that should be done was to arrest Tre- 
vaskis. 

‘‘ On what grounds ?” asked Miss Paget. 

‘‘ Not on grounds — on suspicion. Oh, no, nothing could or would be 
done unless he were allowed to act, and he was tied — fastened down as 
of old. . . .” This was the light in which his feebleness appeared to him. 
He had in the journey spent more than his reserve of strength, and his 
brain was cruelly clouded by the long days in which, after his violent 
hurt, he had been kept insensible by doses of laudanum. 

Miss Paget made him lie down again on the sofa. She bathed his 
head, and rubbed his temples softly with the palms of her hands. She 
allowed him to talk, for she felt it would be worse than useless to try to 
impose silence while he was in such strange perplexity. He told her 
that his brother as yet knew nothing of Doris ; he could not bear be- 
ginning to explain. Everything he said aroused only wonder and doubt. 
And then he told her how he had been falling asleep on the bunk in his 
oflSce, when he heard some one unlocking the iron safe, and he sprang up 
to catch the thief. The keys had been left with him, and it was only 
Trevaskis who knew of them. . . . He was seized and struck on the 
head. After that, all he could remember was a cavernous place with 
dim lights coming and going, borne by men — one with his face almost 
covered with long, gray hair, the other shorter in stature — and when he 
was alone a feeble light burning in a distant corner. They were gentle 
in attending to him, but one seldom spoke, and his own eyes seemed 
always heavy and dull with sleep. . . . Such memories could hardly 
hold a cine. They bore too much the impress of those fragmentary 
visions of fever which, once finding lodgment in the brain, perpetually 
recur. 

And then the journey to the hospital ! That, too, was like a dream 


THE SILENT SEA 


317 

fitfully remembered. He was borne out of the darkness; the light of 
the stars and the fresh wind were round him, and he thought Helen 
came to him. He even remembered calling on her by name to tell her. 
The horrible shadowy figures were gone, and later he felt sure that Doris 
was there. He could remember her bending over him, or near him. He 
seemed to have wakened up from time to time. He thought at first it 
was heaven, and then he knew it was much better, for they were both 
alive and on the earth. 

Then he woke up in the hospital, and no one even knew who had 
brought him there. At least, they did not know his name. An old 
hawker, the wardsman said, who had brought people to the other hos- 
pital from Colmar, ^t he had not been brought from the mine. He 
had been brought from some one working a claim. She had seen in 
Doris’s letter that he had been near a place they both knew. 

But, after all, everything is well, Victor,” said Miss Paget gently, 
gratefully noticing that the look of anguished perplexity was gradually 
leaving his face. Even if Doris has gone away, she is with her friends. 
She will be taken care of, and you will in a short time be strong and 
well again.” 

She soothed him and talked to him till he dropped into a sound sleep. 
She heard footsteps coming to the door, and softly opened it in time to 
prevent any one from knocking. It was Victor’s brother, followed by 
the landlady with a tray, on which stood a little basin full of beef- tea. 
‘‘ Half a pound of gravy beef, quickly boiled in a common saucepan,” 
thought Miss Paget, giving the preparation a brief glance. She whis- 
pered that the patient had fallen asleep, and had better not be dis- 
turbed. Then she went into another sitting-room to speak to Victor’s 
brother. 

“You have succeeded in quieting him. Miss Paget,” he said, looking 
at her with a little smile. Then he showed her a telegram which he had 
a few moments before received from Trevaskis, announcing that he 
would be in town by the late train to-morrow. 

“Poor old Victor has some dark thoughts about this man,” said 
Lance. “But of course it is part of the fever. The doctor at the 
Broombush hospital said he was no more fit to travel than he was to 
fly. However, short of tying him, he could not be kept. But now. 
Miss Paget, do you think you could prevail on him to have a doctor 
and a nurse ?” 

“ A doctor and nurse here ? I am afraid the bare idea would irritate 
him. He is so anxious to go about.” 

“ But now that he has seen you ? Don’t think I am trying to force 
your confidence. But I thought, before Victor went to the wilds, that 
he had lost his heart to you. And certainly his intense anxiety only to 


318 


THE SILENT SEA 


come to you at once confirmed the impression, ... I know that you 
would be likely to hesitate. No, don’t tell me a word more than you 
wish.” 

“You are right in supposing that there has been a little more than 
mere friendship between me and your brother. But — now — ” 

“ Then I will just say only one thing, Helen. Excuse the liberty, but 
I have known your name a long time, and like the sound of it much.” 

Miss Paget, who was extremely pale, responded by a friendly little 
nod and smile. Despite her agitation, her eyes were shining with some 
emotion akin to happiness. 

“ There would not, I am certain, be the same risk in Victor’s case that 
there would be with some young men. He is the soul of fidelity. I 
won’t say any more — perhaps I should not say s<? much.” 

“ Thank you. We will put that aspect of the question quite aside 
just now. Victor needs nursing and society. We have so much room, 
and quiet, and everything that is necessary, at Lancaster House. And I 
have just been considering that at my time of life, with Mrs. Tillotson in 
the background — ” 

Her voice failed her a little, but she kept up her smile bravely. 

“ Oh, that would indeed be good for the poor fellow ! He is in such 
a state of intense irritation. I think strangers about him would make 
him wild, and, then, people would come who should not see him — like 
Uncle Stuart.” 

“ Oh, is he to be contraband ?” 

“ Well, yes, as long as he comes looking so black, and saying he must 
have an explanation from Victor of all this sham mystery. Trevaskis, 
the manager, he said, is furious.” 

“ Furious ! I think I should like to see him when he comes,” said 
Miss Paget thoughtfully. 

“ Well, I told uncle he could not possibly see Victor to-day. He’ll 
very likely call the day after to-morrow with the manager, and you must 
just use your own discretion. I thankfully accept your offer — at any 
rate, for some days.” 

After talking over various details as to Victor’s removal, his brother 
went back to Lancaster House, to order the carriage to come for Miss 
Paget and her charge at five o’clock. 


THE SILENT SEA 


319 


CHAPTER XLI. 

Victor awoke calmer and more collected, but with a more settled ^ 
purpose of losing no time in finding out whether the Challoners had 
already sailed, and, if not, whether they were in Adelaide. 

“ The first thing to do is to get a file of the daily papers — here is to- 
day’s,” said Miss Paget. “ Pll see if the landlady can help us.” 

Lance had gone to telephone to his bank, and the landlady went 
vaguely searching in various rooms till she had newspapers for six con- 
secutive days. But when Miss Paget returned with these, there was no 
longer any need to consult them. Victor sat with that day’s paper in 
his hand, with a stunned look on his face. 

^‘They are gone — they are gone,” he said, speaking like one hypno- 
tized, and then in silence he pointed to the passenger-list of a French 
mail-boat that had sailed on the previous day : ‘‘ Mr. and Mrs. R. Chal- 
loner and two Misses Challoner.” “ Doris is put down as their daughter, 
and they are gone,” he repeated in the same tones. ‘‘ Oh, to think that 
I am only a day too late — one miserable little day — and all the days that 
I was lying tied and in darkness !” 

The very cruelty of the blow seemed to take away all power of further 
emotion. Doris was gone — across the great, salt, dividing ocean — believ- 
ing that he did not love her with all his heart and soul, and yet speaking 
no word of blame, acquitting him from all faults. There was nothing 
now to be done but sufEer and wait till he was a little stronger. 

“ She is with her friends, you know, Victor. She is safe. It is not 
as if any harm would come to her,” said Miss Paget, more dismayed by 
his calm and settled misery than she had been by his irritable im- 
patience. 

‘‘Yes, she is with her friends,” he answered slowly ; “but I am not 
with her. And we were to have made this voyage together — with the 
great sea around us, full of motion and lustre. So unlike that other gray 
inland one she called always the Silent Sea !” 

“ The one thing that you must now set your heart on is to get well. 
You can then make plans and carry them out. I am going to take care 
of you.” 

“ To take care of me ?” he repeated, as if the thought were too novel 
to be grasped all at once. 


320 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ Yes, to see that you have proper nourishment at proper times, that 
you rest when you ought, that you do not attempt things beyond your 
strength.” 

“But then you’ll have some doctor hanging round, who will try. to 
give me remedies for everything except what ails me,” said Victor 
moodily. 

But Miss Paget undertook to obviate all and every disagreeable con- 
tingency. Lance returned and put up some of Victor’s clothes which he 
had not taken with him to the mine. Then he supported Victor to the 
carriage, which was waiting at the door. 

“You are walking more firmly and looking better already,” he said, 
taking the silence which had fallen on his young brother as a sign of the 
contentment of a heart more at rest. 

“ I am going to take him for a drive,” said Miss Paget, after giving 
her directions to the coachman, and arranging some cushions round Vic- 
tor in the deep, soft-seated carriage. 

The day had been very warm, but a slight, rapid shower had lightened 
the atmosphere. They drove in a westerly direction through quiet, wide 
streets, where each house was fronted with fiower-gardens still full of 
roses, great masses of petunias, and beds of heliotrope, bleached ashy 
pale by long days of summer. The slopes of the Adelaide hills, shadowy 
with vines and olives, with tall pomegranate-trees and groves of oranges 
and lemons, were lying in the warm sunshine, with white houses gleaming 
through the foliage like quiet, soft scenes in pictures, each with some in- 
dividual feature of its own as the point of view was changed. 

They passed through Walkerville, where so many of the houses are 
enclosed in roomy gardens, and, crossing by the Company’s Bridge, they 
drove into the Botanic Park, skirting the Torrens bank, with its sloping 
terraces planted with fast-growing trees and drooping willows along the 
water’s edge. Then they passed through the length of the exquisite 
avenue of plane-trees, one long, unbroken arch of pure emerald flame. 
Victor, whose eyes had grown accustomed to the naked monotony of the 
great Salt-bush plains, found his spirits gradually reviving under the in- 
fluence of these benign and tranquil aspects of Nature, breathing only of 
well-being and man’s enjoyment of her gifts. The calls and laughter of 
children at play, the rumble of trams and vehicles in the distance, the 
roll of carriages near at hand, the clear, melodious whistle of the black- 
birds, who are here acclimatized, the rapid cries of shell-parrots rifling the 
honey blossoms of the gum-trees, were all blended into a harmonious 
symphony of friendly, familiar life, carrying an assurance to the young 
man’s heart that all must yet be well, though fate had of late dealt him 
so heavy a blow. The constant feeling of heavy apprehension, that had 
been created by the narcotics with which his system had been poisoned. 


THE SILENT SEA 


321 


grew lighter in the serene sunshine among these reassuring sights and 
sounds. 

The two were silent for the most part, and Miss Paget, glancing at 
V-ictoPs face from time to time, saw something of their light coming- 
back to his eyes. The thought arose, what happiness to be once more 
beside him, if only this girl had not crossed his path ! And then she 
reflected how every joy that came in her way was marred by some gray 
spectre of what had been or might come to pass, and with that came the 
resolution that she would postpone her life no longer — that she would 
be glad in the light of the sun, and take with a grateful heart the gifts 
that came in her way. Yesterday her life was bitter with forebodings 
and uncertainty ; she did not know whether Victor were dead or alive, 
or in what latitude he might be of the great, treacherous sea. To-day 
he was safe beside her ; she would rest in that, be glad in it, let to-mor- 
row bring what it might. She leaned back with half-closed eyes, and 
when Victor, stooping a little forward, leaned against her arm, the touch 
mounted to her head like wine. 

He, looking at her for the first time without being engrossed with His 
own emotions, noticed that she was unusually pale. She had, perhaps, 
been suffering since they parted. It was not her way to say much of 
herself. She looked up and found his eyes fixed on her, full of their old 
kindness ; her heart began to beat wildly. 

“ Are you well, Helen ? I have been so full of my own troubles, you 
have hardly told me anything about yourself,” he said. 

“Oh, you see, father and I belong to the happy people who have no 
history,” she answered lightly. 

And then she went over in detail the record of their days since her 
last letter had reached him ; that is, she told him everything, except 
those moments of poignant feeling which sum up more of actual life 
than months of outward events — except those wakeful nights in which 
the years that might await her, empty and shorn of all the happiness she 
coveted, swept by in a ghostly procession. But who, to hear her laugh 
and talk, dwelling on every ludicrous little episode, would have guessed 
aught of this ? Not Victor, certainly, who felt something of his accus- 
tomed buoyancy of spirits returning as he listened, and even laughed 
from time to time. 

As they ascended the rise on which Lancaster House is situated, they 
caught glimpses of the sea, its silver radiance softened by a pale-blue 
haze penetrated with sunshine. Did it look like this to Doris at that 
moment ? Was she perhaps talking to Mrs. Lucy, and recalling some 
mysterious legend of China, or of the time when beasts spoke and Queen 
Bertha span ? 

“ Oh, God bless her ! God bless my little darling, and take care of 
21 


322 


THE SILENT SEA 


her forever and ever !” Victor’s heart swelled and his eyes grew dim. 
What a wonderful thing was this new emotion that had taken such 
tyrannous possession of him — a companion before whose magic that of 
genii or fairy was a mere creature of weight or pence ! A glimpse of 
the sea, the folded slope of a hill, the chance trill of a bird’s song — all 
had now a thrill and a meaning that far transcended their mere external 
beauty. 

This came home to him still more forcibly next morning. During 
the night he slept well ; before waking he dreamed of Doris most vividly. 
She seemed to be quite near him — so near that if he had stretched out 
his hand he could have touched her. But he was so enraptured by the 
smile with which she looked at him that he stood motionless, feasting 
his eyes on her face ; so that when he woke his whole frame was suffused 
with that vague, delicious sense of well-being which comes with happi- 
ness — that supreme contentment in the present moment, without remem- 
bering the past or questioning the future. 

The impression remained with him so strongly that he escaped soon 
after breakfast to muse over his thoughts alone. He walked very slowly 
at first, going up the little rise that to the west of the house commanded 
a view of the sea. He seemed to draw nearer to Doris as he looked. 
How she would love this sight of the great waters, as they lay limpid 
and shimmering in the distance, enveloped in magical light, with faint 
shadows flitting now and then across the quivering blueness, pale and 
visionary as a world apart, which might somehow vanish from sight at 
any moment ! It was like waking to life anew to look on the familiar 
sights of earth, while his nature was so profoundly stirred that it seemed 
as if he were endowed with new senses of perception. There was more 
color in the sky, more melody in the songs of birds, more oxygen in the 
air, deeper and more tender associations bound him to the world, this 
beautiful morning, while every breath he drew gave him an added sense 
of vigor. And the stronger he felt, the clearer grew the light, as of a 
perfected memory, in which he recalled Doris sitting near him, in that 
strange night journey across the Silent Sea. He was buried in these 
recollections, when he saw Miss Paget approaching him. • 

*‘You are looking dreadfully independent this morning,” she said, 
taking his arm. 

“ Yes, Helen ; I think to be near you makes me better,” he answered, 
suddenly touched with the thought of her unvarying goodness to him. 

She thrilled all over at this speech. What if, after all, Doris were 
separated from him beyond recall ? Thoughts arose which she dared not 
dwell on ; hopes leaped to life she would not consciously entertain. 

She had come to tell him that his cousin. Miss Drummond, and his 
brother’s fiancee^ Miss Mason, had called. Was he well enough to see 


THE SILENT SEA 


323 


them? If not, she would make his excuses; they would understand. 
But he almost laughed at the thought of not being strong enough to 
stand a little talk. Why, he was almost well enough to start for Jupiter 
— on foot, if need be. 

He might pride himself on feeling so strong and well, but one at least 
of the young ladies had as much as she could do to keep her tears back 
at sight of him. This was his future sister-in-law, Florry Mason. She 
was at all times an affectionate, tender-hearted girl, and just then she 
was in that slightly exaltee, easily touched mood which many girls ex- 
perience on the eve of marriage, and Victor had been always a great 
favorite with hor. To see him so changed, with all the bloom gone out 
of his face, and his hands so white and bony ! She tried hard to keep 
her voice steady and her eyes bright, but Victor noticed a huskiness in 
her utterance. Was she well, and wasn’t it about time she took fright 
and put off the wedding ? 

This was in allusion to an old joke. Florry had confided to him, 
when they were acting together, that she liked getting engaged im- 
mensely ; but she was sure when the time came she would take fright, 
and put off the wedding. 

His gayety helped to restore her. She had so much to tell him. The 
wedding was to be in nine days, and to-morrow there was to be a wed- 
ding-dress bee at their house. Did he know what that was? All her 
dearest friends assembled to help to make her dress. Well, she had 
nine very intimate friends altogether, and besides these there would be 
one who was a great friend of her mother’s — Miss North — who was 
quite a clever doctor. And wouldn’t Victor come out with Miss Paget 
to-morrow ? Lance would turn up to keep him in countenance. 

“ To sew a bit of your wedding-dress ? I haven’t got a thimble,” an- 
swered Victor. But this was too shabby an excuse, and before she went 
away Miss Mason had Victor’s promise that he would come out to 
Broadmead, her mother was so very anxious to see him. “And oh, 
you poor, dear, dear Victor, to think you have been so dreadfully hurt 
and ill, and we none of us knew it !” 

She cried a little, after all, but afterwards she felt much better, and 
Victor, declaring that she had taken fright after all, shifted his chair so 
that no one saw her but himself. And then she went to Mrs. Tillotson, 
to include her in the invitation to the wedding-dress bee, and Miss Drum- 
mond had a little talk with Victor. 

Her father wished to know whether he would be well enough to see 
him to-morrow morning, and the man from the mine — captain, didn’t 
they call him ? 

“Yes, certainly, I want to see that man — Trevaskis, I mean,” he an- 
swered in an altered voice, while a curious change came over him. A 


S24 


THE SILENT SEA 


shiver passed through his frame, as if touched by a slight current of 
electricity. Suspicion, repulsion, and a longing for revenge, sentiments 
hitherto so foreign to his nature, brought a sombre shadow on his face. 
Miss Paget noticed the alteration, but she was not prepared for the hard, 
cold, steady look of hatred that settled in Victor’s eyes as soon as he 
saw Trevaskis on the following forenoon. Mr. Drummond had first 
entered the morning-room in which his nephew sat writing. The elder 
man murmured something about an extraordinary affair, and an investi- 
gation, and wishing for light on the matter. Victor, without making 
any reply to these feebly jointed statements, asked where Trevaskis was. 

At this moment Miss Paget entered, followed by the manager. He 
was very well tailored, and had improved immensely in appearance since 
Victor last saw him. 

“ Well, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, this is a strange meeting !” he began, with a 
little more effusion than was usual with him. 

Victor ignored the manager’s extended hand, and looked at him fix- 
edly with a malignant expression that gave Miss Paget an unpleasant 
little shock of surprise. 

“ A strange meeting ! I wonder whether it is the strangest we have 
had ?” he said, not speaking till she had left the room. 

A curious scene followed. Trevaskis let himself go, partly because his 
fear and confusion were so great that he felt his safety lay in an assump- 
tion of violent anger. He called on Mr. Drummond, as chairman of the 
directors of the Colmar Mine, to witness the studied insult conveyed by 
the young man’s manner and words. ... He suspected that there was 
something fishy behind this suspicious sort of disappearance ; but to begin 
to make insinuations against him — against him of all men — as if he could 
have a single reason under God’s sky to wish Mr. Fitz-Gibbon any harm ! 
At this point he choked a little, and his voice broke with emotion. 

“Have you taken leave of your senses altogether, Victor?” said his 
uncle, turning on him with austere indignation. 

Victor, from the first moment that consciousness returned, had felt a 
strong suspicion that the attack on him in his ofiflce, and his subsequent 
disappearance, were in some way due to Trevaskis. The moment they 
met this suspicion turned into a conviction, and yet seemed more in- 
credible than before. In spite of himself, he found Trevaskis’s resolute 
and intrepid attitude throwing ridicule on his belief. 

“ You can surely bring forward some grounds for such a serious charge 
against a man,” said Trevaskis in a calmer voice. “ Only, mind you,” he 
added after a little pause, “ I can see well enough that you are not yet 
yourself. I know what it is to have the mind full of cranky ideas left 
by a sharp stroke of fever, and there’s no doubt that there has been 
some foul play somewhere, which will soon very likely be traced up by 


323 


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the police. At any rate, they shall have all the help that I can afford 
them. But I should like to know what you can recollect of the place 
you were in.” 

“ I woke up from time to time in some dark, underground place,” re- 
turned Victor slowly, his eyes fixed on Trevaskis’s face. 

‘‘Underground? Have you any proof, or is your recollection quite 
clear on the point ?” 

“ I cannot say that anything is clear,” answered Victor sombrely. At 
this admission the manager looked at the chairman of directors with a 
significant little nod. 

“ Do you recollect seeing any one attending you or speaking to you ?” 
said Mr. Drummond. 

“Yes, very well. There were two men, one of them I should im- 
agine about Mr. Trevaskis’s height and build, but with gray hair, a long, 
gray beard, and sun-glasses. As far as I can remember, he never spoke. 
The other was a shorter man, and, if my memory does not deceive me, 
he resembled the other. Latterly, I seldom saw the taller man.” 

Victor looked hard at Trevaskis as he spoke, but the manager’s expres- 
sion of eager interest was perfectly exempt from any touch of conscious- 
ness. 

“Two men, and in an underground place,” he repeated thoughtfully. 
As he spoke he took a note-book out of his breast-pocket, and wrote one 
or two short entries. Victor watched him with a baffled, lowering ex- 
pression. 

“ You telegraphed to me about Challoner,” said Trevaskis, as he closed 
his note-book. 

“ I know, I know ! They sailed the day before yesterday,” said Vic- 
tor, turning away with a motion of passionate impatience. Could this 
really be the scoundrel who had spoiled some of the most glorious days 
of a lifetime? he asked himself, with an excess of impotent rage, as 
he thought of Doris sailing leagues and leagues farther away, hour 
on hour, believing that he did not love her — that he had deceived her. 
The belief could hardly be laid to Trevaskis’s account. This mys- 
tery within mystery made his brain reel with the old, chaotic bewilder- 
ment which used to overtake him when he was drugged in his unknown 
hiding-place. 

He felt so weak and shaken that he pushed open the window and 
leaned out for a little fresh air. On hearing his statement as to Chal- 
loner’s departure, a look of pleased surprise came into Trevaskis’s face. 

“Oh, you knew about the Challoners?” he said, and then, finding that 
Victor made no further remark, he turned to Mr. Drummond, saying, 
“It seems Mr. Fitz-Gibbon has nothing more to say to us.” 

On this Mr. Drummond cleared his throat. 


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‘‘ I need hardly tell you, Victor, that this affair has caused me great 
annoyance, and I must ask you, for your own sake, never to breathe to 
any one a word of the most unjust, and I may say extraordinary, suspi- 
cions you first seemed to harbor. I cannot help thinking that your 
mind is still very unsettled.” 

Victor looked at his uncle without replying. ‘‘I wonder if he was 
very much discomposed by my disappearance?” was the thought that 
passed through his mind. As a matter of fact, the old gentleman had 
saved himself from insolvency by appropriating to his own use most of 
the ready money that was to come to Victor on his twenty-first birth- 
day. But the young man was still oblivious of this, and his first feeling 
after his uncle parted from him was one of self-reproach. “ It is hor- 
rible to get a blow on the head and be drugged for a hundred years; it 
fills one with suspicions,” he said to himself wearily. But it was not 
only the physical blow. It was one of those wounds of destiny that dis- 
til a subtle clairvoyance of evil into the moral nature. It was not only 
that the early swell of quick emotion unspoiled by any after-thoughts 
had deserted him, but already his confiding disposition was touched by 
invincible mistrust. This is a common element in the story of human 
lives. Youth, under the action of time, is like a palimpsest exposed to 
a biting acid, that brings strange legends to light. 

“ I have persuaded your uncle and Mr. Trevaskis to stay to luncheon, 
Victor. Will you join us?” said Miss Paget, coming in so softly that 
Victor did not hear her till she stood beside him. 

“ No, Helen, unless you promise to poison them both,” he answered, 
half laughing. But in reality he looked so pale and exhausted after this 
interview, that Miss Paget, in her capacity of nurse, decided he must 
have no more fatigue just then. He was too evidently overwrought in 
mind and body. 

After luncheon was over Miss Paget sat talking to Trevaskis at an 
open French window. 

“ You don’t know what it is to see all these beautiful trees and fiowers 
after being in a place like Colmar,” he said, his eyes riveted on a tall 
hibiscus shrub, all aflame with wide-cupped flowers, of a delicate, bright- 
pink hue, drooping one over the other in innumerable shoals. 

“ Would you like to look at our roses? We have still a great many 
left,” she said ; and, taking a sunshade from a table in the veranda in 
passing, she walked beside him, pointing out those of the rose-bushes 
whose buds and blooms were still untouched by the heat of summer. 
Standing near some tea-roses in the shadow of a tall, slender gum- 
tree, whose pale-pink myrtle blossoms were in possession of some pug- 
nacious pairs of black and yellow honey-eaters. Miss Paget said suddenly, 
“ There is something I want to ask you, Mr. Trevaskis. Do you know 


THE SILENT SEA 327 

why Mr. Fitz-Gibbon is so anxious about the movements of the Chal- 
loners 

At this unexpected and direct question Trevaskis’s face flushed deeply. 
From the moment he entered the house his mind had been actively 
occupied with what he knew of the relations between Miss Paget and 
Victor. His observations, sharpened by what he had learned through 
having overlooked the contents of his desk, as well as the half-written 
letter, was keen to detect signs and glances which would otherwise have 
held no meaning for him. He had seen Miss Paget’s eyes full of tell- 
tale tenderness as they rested on Victor’s pale and agitated face. She 
loved him. Did she know that there was some one who had supplanted 
her? He judged that she did from the nature of her inquiry. And he 
knew that the tale which would best serve his purpose would be the one 
she would most joyfully, most readily believe. These considerations 
passed through his mind in a flash. There was a scarcely perceptible 
pause between the question and his answer. 

“Yes, Miss Paget, I do; and I wish, for Mr. Fitz-Gibbon’s own sake, 
that he would get rid of the ideas this fever seems to have put into his 
head.” 

“ The fever ?” stammered Miss Paget. 

“ Yes, the fever,” returned Trevaskis, in a slow, emphatic voice. “ T 
am not going to say what I think of this mystery of his being thrown 
down and hurt. I know he was far from well at the time. People 
have done strange things before now that they knew nothing about aft- 
erwards.” 

“ You — you don’t think that — that Mr. Fitz-Gibbon had an accident 
out alone when he was in a feverish state ?” 

“ It is what I do think, Miss Paget ; and I think, too, he must have 
wandered and fallen in with some prospectors who thought they would 
make a good thing of keeping him till they would somehow make money 
out of him. People who, perhaps, got some chum of theirs on his way 
to England to drop Mr. Fitz-Gibbon’s card at the inn at Port Pellew, and 
an envelope addressed to me that was in his pocket, so that a hue-and- 
cry wouldn’t be raised after him. . . . They must have got funky over 
keeping him, and then one night took him to the hospital. . . . How^- 
ever, it will be the business of the police to And out all about that if 
they can. . . . But what I wanted to say about this young lady — child 
she was, more than anything else — is, that it would be a thousand pities 
if Mr. Fitz-Gibbon were to risk his health, or even to lose his time. . . . 
It is no use my telling him this. . . . The first question he would put to 
me would be, ‘ How do you know this young lady does not care for me ?’ 
And in honor ” — ^Trevaskis italicized the words with magnificent effect 
— “ I could not tell him. It would be a breach of confidence, and I may 


328 


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say it was something of the nature of an accident that 1 came to know 
it. . . . But I think those who have any influence over him should pre- 
vent his going on any journeys till he is quite well . . . and when he is 
quite well it’s very likely he won’t want to go.” 

“ You think, then, that it was the fever — ” 

‘‘ Yes, and I think the fever is still on him. ... I think there was 
very little — very little indeed — between himself and the young lady at 
all. . . . They just met now and then at Mrs. Challoner’s, and — well, I 
can’t go into all the reasons that make me think it, but it’s my belief 
that it was mostly the fever put this into his head. . . . Why, I’ve known 
men to take an idea into their heads like that, and not get rid of it for 
months — for months, I say — and yet ’twas nothing but the fever.” 

“ Nothing but the fever !” Oh, what a melody the words were in her 
ears, and how many little incidents took to themselves breath, and wings, 
and bore living testimony to the truth of this 1 If only Victor could be 
wooed back to perfect health, to wholeness of mind and body, before he 
took any rash step ! “ Nothing but the fever.” The words penetrated 

her soul with a rapture that had in it something of exquisite pain. Hap- 
piness ! She had hardly known it till this moment. But she refrained 
from thanking God, as she had fervently done when she first went to 
see Victor. The practice seemed to have in it something dangerous for 
her. 

She wandered round 'in the shady avenues for half an hour after the 
visitors had gone, too agitated, and too much engrossed in thoughts that 
left no room for others, to be able to meet Mrs. Tillotson’s endless prat- 
tling. When she went in she found that Victor had fallen asleep, look- 
ing so pale and spent that she half relinquished the thought of going to 
the Masons’. 

But this brought Mrs. Tillotson’s sky down with a run. 

“ Oh, my dear, not go to the wedding-dress bee ? I haven’t heard of 
such an arrangement before, but I am sure it must be quite exquisite. 
And an afternoon tea of that number — not more than fifteen or twenty 
altogether — is always so very, very enjoyable. It will do Victor good — 
the drive there, and the young people. My dear, you and I are very 
quiet, you know — and his sister-in-law to be, and all ; it’s like going to 
his own family.” 

Victor, having awoke, joined the two, and Mrs. Tillotson instantly ap- 
pealed to him. 

Did he really think it would be too much for him ? He begged leave 
to be left at home. Then Miss Paget suggested a compromise. They 
would go early. Victor would see his friends before the other guests 
had come, and then she would drive him back, leaving Mrs. Tillotson at 
Broadmead if she wished. The carriage would return for her later. 


THE SILENT SEA . 


329 


Mrs. Tillotson was not quite happy. It was so entirely an affair of the 
young people. If Helen and Victor came away — well, they would see. 

What happened was that, when they got to Broadmead, Victor was so 
pale and dejected, and, in short, looked so much the invalid, that Mrs. 
Mason insisted upon his lying down in a cool, quiet room,' where no 
sounds reached him but the faint tinkling of a fountain close to the 
window, and the cries of honey-birds rifling the pale, honey-colored blos- 
soms of a tall, young, white gum hard by. She further insisted upon his 
taking some nourishment and drinking some dry champagne, and prom- 
ising to go to sleep. In a little time she came tiptoe into the room, and 
found that he had kept his promise. And then nothing remained to be 
done but to see that the horses were taken out of Miss Paget’s carriage, 
and that she resigned all thought of going away till the cool of the 
evening. 


CHAPTER XLH. 

Miss Florry Mason’s wedding-dress bee formed a pretty and animated 
gathering. The nine or ten dearest friends were chiefly in white or deli- 
cately tinted dresses, and each was adorned with a profusion of blooms 
worn in bouquets, clusters, wandering sprays, or plastrons, according to 
the nature of the wearer’s favorite flowers. There was a swelling ripple 
of talk and laughter as they settled down, and a little consternation on 
finding that the dressmaker had not prepared “ seams ” enough. Some 
had swelling lengths of ivory satin, but all could not be employed on the 
skirt and jupon. 

“ A bit of piping will do for me,” said one. 

“ And the pocket for me,” said another. 

“ What is the use of putting a pocket in a wedding-dress ?” asked one 
of the elder girls. “ It is only in your sanest and calmest moment you 
can remember where it is to be found.” 

At last all were provided with some portion of the satin, into which 
more or less stitches could be put, by amateur needles, without encroach- 
ing on the delicate question of fit or style. 

“Now that we are all at work, I think the ‘sanest and calmest’ of us 
should tell a story,” said the bride-elect. 

“ I wish I had been married for a few days, and then I would tell 
you girls a story that would make your flesh creep,” said a young sister 
of Florry’s, who had but recently escaped from the school-room. 

There was some laughter and expostulation, and the elder sister said a 
little severely, “ Now, Mab, don’t begin to carry on !” 


THi: SILENT SEA 




“ I wonder you allow yourself such a common phrase, looking as you 
do so much like an exalted cherub,” retorted Mab. “ And as for ^ car- 
rying on,’ nothing will make me believe that it is not rather dreadful 
to go away from every friend you have in the world with a strange 
man.” 

“ Do you call Lance a strange man ?” asked Florry indignantly. 

“ Certainly ; you just see him for a little time in the evening after he 
has spent the day in trying to look good — not always successfully. Be- 
sides, if it weren’t rather gruesome, why should one’s mother give the 
institution away so ?” 

“ Oh, don’t laugh, girls . it will only make her worse,” said Florry, in 
a vexed tone. But the girls were too much amused not to laugh, and 
one of them pursued the subject by asking how one’s mother “gave the 
institution away.” 

“ Why, for weeks before a girl marries,” replied Mab very seriously, 
“ her mother never calls her anything but ‘ poor dear !’ and ‘ poor dar- 
ling !’ and the last day of all it is ‘ poor dear darling !’ and tears.” 

“You have been through it all, Mab?” 

“Yes. Florry is the fourth girl married out of this house, and two 
brothers have followed the same broad path, and even they, I believe, 
breakfasted on colored soda-water the morning they were led to the altar, 
blushing, the poor dears ! like tomatoes.” 

“ Really, Mab, I’ll get mother to ask you to go into the school-room if 
you run on at such a rate,” said Florry. 

“ I can call spirits from the vasty deep, and so can you, and so can 
any man, but will they come?” said Mab, in a declamatory, semi-mocking 
tone, very provocative of a breach of the peace. 

Fortunately a diversion was caused just then by the entrance of Mdlle. 
Clemente, a young French lady whose father was a viticulturist near the 
Masons. 

“ Come here, dear, till I admire ‘ le dernier chic ’ in millinery,” cried 
Mab, between whom and this young lady a warm friendship existed, un- 
impaired by the fact that neither was very fluent in the other’s mother 
tongue. 

“ Ma cherie^ rien de plus simple et de moins complique. Ce qui manque 
en general un chapeau moderne c'est Videalite^'' said mademoiselle, taking 
her chapeau to bits like a Chinese puzzle, by pulling out a few pearl- 
headed pins. 

Mab insisted on mademoiselle sitting by her, “ de causer chiffons^'' and 
gradually the “ bee ” fell into amicable pairs and groups, till a burning 
discussion arose regarding a recent tennis tournament, in which sides 
were vehemently taken regarding two champion players — A, an English- 
man, and B, an Australian, 


THE SILENT SEA 


331 


A is so much more graceful ; look at his splendid underhand strokes : 
he puts the pace on a ball entirely with his wrist.” 

“ But his volley is nothing to B when smashing, and the brilliant way 
B plays his strokes overhand, and takes his balls forehand.” 

“ Ah, but look at the splendid length A kept on his balls, hardly any 
falling inside the service line.” 

But then B’s double play ! Did you notice him in the semi-final ? 
A cannot come near him in some things ; for example, the underhand 
lift.” 

Do you compare the two ? ‘ For as sunlight unto moonlight, and 

as water unto wine — ’ ” 

“I think. Miss Paget, I must make you mistress of the ceremonies,” 
said Mrs. Mason, advancing with a smile from the bay-window, in which 
she had been engrossed in talk with Mrs. Tillotson till the rising tide of 
too eager controversy attracted her attention. 

Miss Paget was laying a fold on a long slip of bridal satin, smiling 
from time to time at the girlish chatter going on around her, but, on the 
whole, too much engrossed with her own thoughts to have a very clear 
idea of what was being said. 

“ Oh, very well,” she answered ; “ what does a mistress of the cere- 
monies do ?” 

“ I think she sorts those who are of the wrong faith in tennis into 
packages not wanted on the voyage,” said a demurely grave voice. 

“ That is too burning a question. As I am in authority, I think Pll 
second Florry’s original proposal, and call on the oldest and wisest of 
you. for a story. I am the oldest, but I wouldn’t like to say I am the 
wisest.” 

“ For my own part, I believe a girl is as wise as ever she will be at 
sixteen,” said Mab, holding up her chin defiantly. 

“ Oh, Mab, Mab, you don’t really think so !” said a girl with velvet- 
soft voice and eyes who sat near the enfant terrible. 

‘‘Then, if you think you are aeons wiser than I am, you tell a story, 
Jessie,” responded Mab with a determined air. 

Jessie laughed, and then held up a trailing breadth of the thick, shin- 
ing satin she was overcasting with minute stitches, looked at it admir- 
ingly, and said, 

“ Really, Florry, this is the loveliest satin — ” 

“ Oh, you awfully mean thing !” said Mab impetuously. “ I would 
sooner be a stewed rabbit than try to get out of a contract like that !” 

“ Like what, Mab ?” 

“ Why, smothering the point in dispute by holding up ivory satin to 
a lot of girls — ” 

“ But why is that such an infamous proceeding 


332 


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“ Because no question of truth or justice has the slightest show, com- 
pared to the tail of a wedding-dress, especially if it is twenty-five and a 
demi-bob a yard.” 

‘‘ Oh, really, Mab !” began Florry in a pained voice. And then Jessie 
— being one of the fierily sympathetic kind who go through life re- 
sponding to every call, and seeking above all things to save others 
from the pain which her own too sensitive nature exposed her to — inter- 
posed. 

“ Yes, I suppose it is true. I did try to get out of the challenge. The 
thing is to show that at sixteen or thereabouts you had as much sense as 
at — well, say twenty-five.” 

“ Yes ; if the theory functions, you can easily spot an incident,” said 
Mab with the calm certainty which belongs to her years, and a mixture 
of metaphors peculiarly her own province. 

Thus goaded on, Jessie looked pensively thoughtful, diving into her 
past life for a “ case in point.” 

“ Well, it is hardly a story ; it is about myself, and it makes me rather 
ridiculous,” she said, laughing a little. 

“ Of course — because you were not so wise then,” said Mab in an en- 
couraging tone. 

“ It was when we were returning from England some years ago. 
Among the passengers there was a Lord Guy Pearsall, fourth son of the 
Duke of Saltson.” 

“ And you were cringing enough to fall in love with him ?” said some 
one, laughing mischievously in the shadow of the grand piano, near a 
folding-door that opened into a conservatory radiant with exotic flowers. 
“ A scion of the effete British aristocracy, and your father a fiery repub- 
lican 1” 

“ No, I did not,” answered Jessie, blushing a little. “ I admit I ad- 
mired his filbert nails very much, for I know they often come into the 
world, but seldom last — ” 

There was general laughter at this. 

Well, we forgive you enthusing about filbert nails, which probably 
require generations of people living on others. But, confess now, he had 
other attractions V 

‘‘ Not in the way of being good-looking. He was quite a little man, 
not at all young, with rather a red face, and hardly any hair ; none on 
his face, and hardly any on his head. He told father he had about three 
sous a day to live on. I suppose it was true, for we heard he often lost 
forty or fifty pounds a night at cards. However, we got very friendly, 
as people do on ship-board. And really he had not a thread of affecta- 
tion in him. He was going to a cattle-station in North Queensland; to 
live there, you know,, not just on a visit. I said to him one day, how 


THE SILENT SEA 


333 


different he would find it from his previous life, for he had lived nearly 
always in big cities.” 

Oh, Jessie, you were making it easy for him to ask you to share his 
solitude !” said the irrepressible Mab. But she was laughingly repri- 
manded by Miss Paget, and Jessie went on, 

Well, he said he thought he would rather like ‘ roughing it,’ and 
then I don’t quite know how it came in — ” 

“ Oh, conversation is often very inconsequent in real life, especially 
on board a mail-boat,” said some one in a tone of judicial gravity. 

“ Well, I fancy it was to prove that he had roughed it a little, even 
in England, for he told me how, a short time before he left, he had been 
staying at a rectory in the country, and how he thought a bourgeoisie 
dinner at six o’clock was so nice and interesting. How there was a 
whole leg of mutton — a whole leg on the table at once — and potatoes 
and things standing in dishes, and not removed till they were nearly all 
eaten ; and how, when these were taken away, the maid brought in a 
pie — quite a large dish — and after that came the most curious part of 
the performance : the maid went round the table with a funny little 
brush, with a crooked ivory back to it, and swept the table — actually 
swept it, by Jove ! with this odd-looking brush, before putting down the 
apples and walnuts, etc.” 

“ Oh, Jessie, what fun to hear him describing a crumb-brush ! Didn’t 
you laugh?” 

“Yes — at the crumb-bfush,” said Jessie, her cheeks reddening. 

“ I would have laughed outright, and told Lord Guy that it was only 
on Sundays we used a crooked brush with an ivory back,” said another. 

“ Well, I know I was a dreadful little snob, but it gave me a sort of 
humiliated feeling to hear our every-day dinners described as if they 
were the customs of some newly discovered savages. But I was only 
seventeen at the time, and if you think, Mab, I would be guilty of such 
silliness now. . . . And what followed was worse, for father asked him 
to dinner. Lord Guy stayed a fortnight at Government House, and I 
just felt I would die if our maid went round sweeping the table before 
him. So I implored mother to have dinner a la russe. You know that 
was not common here seven years ago — ” 

“My dear Florry,” said the mother of the bride-elect, entering the 
room at this juncture, “ Miss North has come; but she has a young lady 
with her, something of an invalid, and thinksr she had better not stay, 
perhaps.” 

“ Ah, she must, if only for half an hour,” returned Florry eagerly. 

She excused her absence for a few moments, warning the narrator of 
the crumb-brush story not to proceed till she returned. In a short time 
she came back and placed a large easy-chair opposite the open bay- 


334 


THE SILENT SEA 


window, explaining, as she did so, that Miss North and her young charge 
would come in for a short time just to see them at work. 

“ She is the loveliest girl you ever saw,” she was saying when the 
stranger entered, leaning on Miss North’s arm. She bowed with grave 
simplicity as she was led to the arm-chair, and as they looked at her with 
kindly, interested faces, each felt that her rare loveliness could not have 
been exaggerated. The deep, radiant eyes, with their heavy, sweeping 
lashes, the flower-soft oval face, the white, wide brow framed with masses 
of deep amber hair, but, above all, the curiously spiritual expression of 
face — all made a picture which, once seen, could not but linger long in 
the memory. But why was the face of one so young and beautiful 
stamped with that strange look of remoteness alike from the turmoil, 
excitement, and careless gayety of youth ? It seemed as if the careless 
chatter around her could have as little part in her thoughts as if she 
already belonged to another world. 

She looked out through the open window, and into the valley below 
the lawn, which was filled with the delicate, downy foliage of olive-trees, 
whose gray-green leaves, in clustered masses, have something of the dim- 
ness of pale clouds rather than the verdure of living trees. 

“ I do not know those trees, I think,” she said, turning to Miss Ma- 
son, who had drawn a chair to her side. 

‘‘ Those down in the valley ? They are olive-trees.” 

“Yes, I remember reading about them a short time ago,” she said, 
mentally recalling the words, “ And he came out, and went as his cus- 
tom was unto the Mount of Olives.” 

It was on the day before her mother died she had read this passage. 
But the interval between that time and the present seemed now to be 
separated from her, not by months, but by a few hours. 

There was some demand on Miss Mason which called her to another 
part of the room. Seeing Miss Paget near at hand, looking at Doris 
with fixed interest, she introduced the two, and asked Miss Paget to take 
her place beside the new-comer. 

“ Miss Paget, there is something I should like to ask you,” said Doris, 
when they were left alone. 

“Yes, dear; let me hear what it is.” 

“ Is your name Helen ?” 

“Yes.” 

Doris was silent for a little, and then said softly, 

“ I am glad we have met.” 

“ Had you heard my name before ?” 

“Yes; you could hardly imagine where I heard it the first time.” 

“ I should like to know.” 

“It was in the midst of the Silent Sea — the gray, lonely plains 


THE SILENT SEA 


335 


where the gray salt-bush, bending before the wind, looks like noiseless 
waves/’ 

‘‘ And who spoke my name there ?” 

‘‘ Victor.” 

“ Ah ! you heard him speak it ? Was he — did he know you were 
there ?” 

“ No. He was ill with fever.” 

“ Near the house in which you lived ?” 

“ No ; he had gone away. I do not quite understand. But the man 
who took care of him in a little hut said Victor did not wish people to 
know where he was for some reason.” 

‘‘ Was that the one who took him to the hospital ?” 

“ No ; it was Kenneth — Kenneth Campbell, our old shepherd — who 
took him. I was with Kenneth, and sat near Victor to make his head 
easier. And then I heard him call on you, as the man who took care of 
him did before.” 

“ The man in the little hut ?” 

“Yes. Can you tell me how Victor is? I have been wishing to know 
so much before we go away.” 

Miss Paget drew a long, quivering breath. For a moment she thought 
her answer would be, “ He is here — you will see him but almost as if 
without volition her answer came, 

“ He is much better. He came from the hospital two days ago.” 

“ Oh, I am glad ! And you have seen him ?” 

“Yes; he is staying at our house. I am taking care of him.” 

“ Dear Miss Paget, I know you will be so good and kind !” There 
was a scarcely perceptible tremor in the girl’s voice. 

By way of answer. Miss Paget pressed Doris’s hand. There was a 
mist before her eyes, and a faint, far-off tumult in her ears. It seemed 
as if her heart were torn by two contending impulses, and as if she 
waited helplessly to see which prevailed. 

“ I am happy you are taking care of him, for I know he loves you,” 
said Doris, after a little pause. 

A servant brought them some tea. Miss Paget looked round to see 
if perhaps Victor had come into the drawing-room. She saw Mrs. Ma- 
son leaving it with a small tray, and she divined that this was some tea 
for Victor in his own room. Should she hasten after Mrs. Mason, and 
tell her that Miss North’s young charge was a friend whom Victor would 
be glad to see? Should she tell Doris that he was here? She did 
neither, and the moments passed. 

“ My dear, I think we must be going now,” said Miss North, coming 
to the bay-window in which the two sat. 

When going away, Doris asked Miss Paget to come to see her on the 


336 


THE SILENT SEA 


morrow, and Miss Paget gladly consented. The hour was fixed for five 
o’clock in the afternoon by Miss North. She was a lady of consider- 
able talent, extremely hospitable to new ideas, and perhaps more willing 
still to impart them. She lingered to speak to Miss Paget while Florry 
Mason talked to Doris. 

“ I am glad you are coming to see the dear child. I want her to get as 
well as possible before she leaves. She has a touch of intermittent fever, 
and you know the average doctor’s old-fashioned way of putting people 
to bed ! Now, I am certain that the sources of life are profoundly influ- 
enced by our will ; and this girl, young and beautiful as she is, and in a 
way happy, would be perfectly content to die. She has lost her mother, 
in whom she was entirely wrapped up. She was brought up too much 
alone. It was partly, I believe, a fad of her father’s. Now, my theory 
is, that girls should not be subjected to experiments. They may do no 
harm, and produce interesting variations, in the case of men and pigeons.” 

Miss Paget watched Miss North’s neat little brougham drive away, and 
then heard a chorus of voices discuss the singular beauty and charm of 
her young patient. 

‘‘ But I like eyes witfi more ‘ go ’ in them,” said Mab. ‘‘ Hers are 
just holy. One would not dare to speak to her of a ‘ mash ’ or — ” 

A what, Mab ?” said her mother, in a wondering tone. 

‘‘ A ‘ mash,’ mother — a new kind of encyclopaedia.” 


CHAPTER XLHI. 

I CANNOT tell Victor on the way home, because Mrs. Tillotson would 
overhear,” thought Miss Paget. But underlying the thought was the 
question, “ Shall I tell him at all ?” 

Broadmead was situated at the foot of the Adelaide hills, and, as is so 
often the case there in the summer time, a strong easterly gully breeze 
sprang up after sundown. The wind was full of unquiet voices in Miss 
Paget’s ears as they drove homeward. The first stars were beginning to 
swim into sight ; the daylight still lingered in the west in a wan, diffused 
light. Away in the distance beyond the town the sea lay dark and mo- 
tionless, touched here and there with long lines of silvery light that dis- 
tinguished the sea waters from the darkening shore. 

Victor lay back in the carriage lost in thought. He bad slept for 
many hours. Now that he was calm and collected, he was trying afresh 
to find some clue to the network of problems by which he was sur- 
rounded. For the first time it occurred to him that his desk, containing 


THE SILENT SEA 337 

all his private letters, would be at the manager’s mercy. Then he rec- 
ollected something about a letter to Helen. Had he addressed it? 

Helen, did you have any letter sent to you from the mine later than 
my telegram ?” he said suddenly in an undertone, bending towards her. 

“ No, none,” she answered. 

I wonder if that is the clue ?” he said half aloud. Was it Trevaskis 
who had told Mrs. Challoner of the relationship between himself and 
Miss Paget, and had Doris been thus misled ? In the midst of the fury 
this conjecture aroused, Victor was overcome by a feeling of disgusted 
weariness. What was the use of spending himself in angry thoughts 
when all the time Doris was away beyond recall? He would start by 
the very next boat. It did not matter whether he were well or not. To 
follow in the wake of the vessel that bore Doris away would do him 
more good than anything else in the world. 

Miss Paget, on her part, was equally absorbed in her own reflections, 
while Mrs. Tillotson prattled gently on from one subject to another. 
Now she was describing the last grand ball-dress that Helen’s eldest sis- 
ter had worn a few days before the Pagets returned. 

Bleute^ I believe they call it, my dear — a sort of white damask 
spangled with gold — decollete en cceur and down the back, on the shoul- 
ders white satin bows fringed with gold. I don’t know what there is 
in shoulder-bows, though, that don’t seem to accord well with years — 
well, of maturity.” 

Perhaps it is the associations of the nursery,” suggested Miss Paget. 

Mrs. Tillotson, without pursuing the subject, went on to other dresses, 
in which sky-blue velvet, opening over a sky-blue crepe de chine^ and old- 
rose brocade, with old-rose satin panels, etc., figured luxuriously. 

“ It is such a comfort, don’t you think, that our papers have taken to 
describing dresses at the more fashionable parties. It really gives quite 
a tone to society. And yet sometimes one can’t help thinking beauty 
when unadorned — how does it go? There was that young girl who 
came in with Miss North. I thought I ought to know her, somehow.” 

Miss Paget’s heart seemed to leap into her throat, but she kept silent, 
and Mrs. Tillotson went on, 

“There she was just in black and white, you know. I didn’t catch 
her name. I think you spoke to her. I believe Victor has fallen asleep, 
poor boy 1” 

“ No, I am wide awake,” answered the young man, sitting up, and, 
shaking himself free for a little from his engrossing thoughts, he talked 
at intervals all the rest of the way. His first care on reaching Lancaster 
House was to consult one of the daily papers, to see when the next mail- 
steamer sailed. There was a P. and O. going in six days. He could land 
at Brindisi, and get across to Mentone within twenty-four hours. Why, 
2 ^ 


338 


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he might be there within a day or two of the time the Challoners reached 
the place ! In six days he would be sailing in the wake of the vessel that 
bore them away — very likely gaining on her — for it was the Bendigo that 
was going, and the Bendigo was well known to be swiftest of the mail- 
boats. Suppose the Marly ^ the boat by which the Challoners and Doris 
had gone, lost a few days on the way, why, at Aden, or Port Said, or 
Ismailia the Bendigo might actually catch her up ! 

He conjured the scene of meeting Doris on shore at one of these ports. 
He saw her eyes lifted to his with all their sweet radiance ; he heard the 
thrill of gladness in her voice — the thrill with which it vibrated that night 
at Stonehouse when she said, “You have come?” 

“Yes, Doris, I have come. Oh, my darling ! how could you for one 
moment believe that I had deceived you ? . . . And she would not even 
blame me,” he reflected, coming back from Ismailia to the veranda at 
Lancaster House, where he was pacing up and down. 

Here the hot east wind was not so high as at the foot of the hills, and 
was, besides, modified by surrounding acres densely planted with trees, 
by many fountains falling in continuous cascades of water in soft, cooling 
showers. 

Yes, he would start in six days from this evening. A note to his 
tailor, an order on his banker, and all was ready. To others he would 
say nothing till the day before his departure. His uncle would want to 
detain him on business, Lance because of his wedding, the police because 
of the search that had been instituted to bring to light those who had 
assaulted and confined him ; Helen would be anxious to keep him till he 
was stronger. But all these things were as packthreads exposed to flame 
in face of his motive for getting away. . . . Oh, to be on the face of the 
great deep, speeding hour by hour nearer to the moment in which he 
should see Doris once again ! 

The heavy weight that seemed at times to press upon his brain — the 
drooping languor, the ennui^ the vindictive, revengeful thoughts against 
Trevaskis — all these had fallen from him as he gave himself to thoughts 
of Doris and of his speedy journey. After all, how much better it was 
to think of those we love, than of those who call up feelings of revenge 
and hatred and all uncharitableness ! 

As this thought crossed Victor’s mind, he stood opposite one of the 
open French windows of the drawing-room in which Helen and Mrs. 
Tillotson were sitting. The latter was drinking tea, and talking as usual 
without cessation. 

“ Poor, dear Helen, how that old woman must bore her at times !” he 
thought, glancing at her. His gaze was arrested by the harassed expres- 
sion and the extreme pallor of her face. He recollected how this had 
struck him the first day she drove out with him after his return to town. 


THE SILENT SEA 


339 


He reflected, too, how she was always ready to sacrifice herself for others. 
With this reflection he seemed suddenly to regain the point of view from 
which he had tried to write on the evening before he was to leave the 
mine. She had no warning of the news this letter was to have conveyed ; 
she had waited in ignorance and uncertainty till she had come to him 
the instant she had received his message — and then, he remembered it 
well, without even a word of greeting, he had asked her only concerning 
Doris. . . . Yes, he was ill and desperate, stupid with drugs and wild with 
disappointment, and he was misled into believing she must have known 
something of the origin of Doris’s letter. All that had formed part of 
his point of view. But now he was trying to realize hers. 

In the effort a great wave of compunction, and a feeling akin to shame, 
swept over him. How good and generous she had been to him ! He 
was glad that she had never really loved him ; but how grateful he ought 
to be for her loyalty and friendship ! He sat on a cane lounge by the 
open window, waiting for her to look up. But she did not look up, she 
looked down ; she drew a book towards her, not to read, but to hide her 
tears. She was crying. He looked away instinctively, knowing she was 
unconscious of his observation. 

Miss Paget murmured some excuse to Mrs. Tillotson, and escaped to 
her own room. She was in a state of miserable indecision as to her 
action. At times the thought was strong with her that Trevaskis’s 
assertions were true — that Doris did not love Victor, and that his own 
thoughts respecting her were partly the result of fever. I am happy 
you are taking care of him, for I know he loves you !” The words still 
sounded in her ears. But also with the words rose before her the girl’s 
sweet, candid look — her childlike trust and direct simplicity. 

“ Oh, what am I going to do — what am I going to do ?” she mur- 
mured to herself on reaching her room. If Doris were going to sail in 
a few days, should she allow her to go without making a sign to Victor, 
on the mere chance that, as he grew better and stronger, his love for 
Doris should prove to be partly the phantasm of fever? But what of 
the girl herself? Was there no lurking wistfulness in her voice and look 
— no tones or subtle inflections that told their own story ? 

“ It is wrong — it is wrong not to tell him, come what may !” she said, 
covering her face with her hands in an agony of uncertainty. Each beat 
of the pendulum seemed to be offering her the choice of free action. Yet 
each moment seemed also to bring her the consciousness that not her 
will nor her better aspirations would prevail, but this preponderant, irre- 
sistible passion, which had given a treacherously egoistic warp to all the 
impulses of her nature — this passion which said to her, ^‘Risk all, risk 
everything, but do not give him up. Hold on by the least chance ; you 
cannot afford to think of others.” 


340 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ But I shall — I shall consider others — I must !” came the contending 
impulse. She threw open her window to get more air. She heard the 
sound of Victor’s footsteps. He was near her. She would go to him at 
once, and tell him before she could change her mind. She went out, and 
the moment she drew near he turned to her, holding out his hands. 

Helen, I was just thinking of you ! How dear and good you have 
been to me !” 

He took her hand in his, and held it in the firm, afl!ectionate clasp of 
a younger brother. 

Then at the touch of his hand and the sound of his voice a sort of 
moral dislocation took place. Her purpose was reversed as completely 
as if a brief and inexplicable delirium of the brain had destroyed all se- 
quence of thought. The hot air, heavily scented with orange-blossoms, 
blew in her face, making her feel faint and drowsy. 

She made an effort to speak, but, instead of uttering any words, she 
gave a long, low sigh. 

You are not well,” said Victor, in a troubled voice. 

No, my head feels rather heavy and confused. I think perhaps the 
sea-air might do me good.” 

“ Oh, yes, Helen, you ought to go. You are always thinking of 
others. You do not care enough for yourself.” 

The words had a mocking ring to her. Nevertheless, she went on 
after a pause, 

“ I begin to think it would be nice to go to Port Callunga. It is so 
cool and quiet. But, Victor, I would not go unless you came — unless 
you let us take care of you till you are quite recovered.” 

She sat on a lounge where her face was in shadow, but where she 
could see his face in the soft glow of the tall lamp in the drawing-room, 
whose wide, square shade was draped with rose-tinted silk and lace. 

Victor refiected rapidly that it would be better not to tell Helen at 
that moment of his unalterable determination to sail by the Bendigo, 
After all, he could spend two or three days at Port Callunga, and she 
would see how quickly he got strong and well. 

“ We have plenty of room at Port Callunga for a small regiment, and 
we shall only be five in all,” pursued Miss Paget ; “ my father and the 
professor, you and Mrs. Tillotson, and myself.” 

‘‘I shall be glad to come, if you go soon — say the day after to- 
morrow.” 

“ Yes, why not ? We can drive there by starlight. I could not well 
leave before.” 

“ Oh, that will be grand ! Part of the road winds by the sea-shore, 
between tall rocks,” said Victor, with something of his old vivacity. 
“ The stars overhead, and a moon either waning or coming — I have lost 


THE SILENT SEA 


341 


all count of the moon ; the immensity of the hollow-sounding sea on 
one side, you taking care of me, and me seeing that you don’t die in 
looking after me and Mrs. Tillotson.” 

“ Yes, Victor, what is it said Mrs. Tillotson, who had been listen- 
ing to the sound of voices for some time, with a great longing to join 
the speakers. 

Oh, did you really overhear me said Victor, in a tone of contri- 
tion; “and me abusing you like — your dearest friend. Well, it isn’t my 
fault — it’s history : ‘ Listeners never hear any good of themselves.’ ” 

“ Hark to the boy !” said Mrs. Tillotson, laughing, as she settled her- 
self comfortably in the cane rocking-chair that Victor drew forward for 
her. “ You really are getting quite yourself again, Victor.” 

“ I am getting more than myself,” replied Victor, half in play and 
half in earnest, as the memory of the contradictory emotions which had 
in turn governed him in the course of the past day flitted across his 
mind. “ Besides my proper self that I have hitherto known, there’s an 
older creature coming along, who takes me by the ear from time to time, 
and tells me I have been an irreparable young ‘ dolt.’ ” 

“ Is it about your disappearing like that, and as suddenly coming 
back ?” asked Mrs. Tillotson eagerly. 

She virtually felt an ache in every joint of her system for fuller in- 
formation on these points. On that first day when Miss Paget, at a 
moment’s notice, had been summoned away, and had returned late in 
the afternoon, with Victor looking incredibly changed, pale, and anxious, 
without a trace of his old, merry self, Mrs. Tillotson, instead of having 
any sort of a satisfactory explanation given to her, had been taken aside 
by Helen, and told in the most explicit terms that under no circum- 
stances was the patient to be worried with questions or surmises. He 
had been dreadfully ill, and some people had been telling lies — that was 
all the sum of the information contributed by Helen. 

But perhaps the patient himself, now that he seemed to be getting 
into his old, proper spirits, might be more liberal in giving those details 
after which a kindly heart naturally hankers. With this hope Mrs. Til- 
lotson ventured for the first time on a direct question. But, on being 
thus squarely summoned before an assize which he knew was bent 
chiefly on gathering news for vague and widely disseminated gossip, 
Victor speedily retreated into the safety of a general statement. 

“ Oh, as to my disappearance, we all have to wait to see what the 
police tell us,” he answered ; and then, swayed by the one dominant 
purpose which had come to him within the last few hours — that of get- 
ting well as soon as possible, and in any case sailing for the Old World 
in the course of six days — he shortly afterwards availed himself of the 
privilege of an invalid by going to bed quite early. 


342 


THE SILENT SEA 


Miss Paget was, in the meantime, trying to believe that for once in 
her life she had acted in a rational manner. Lance Fitz-Gibbon’s con- 
jecture as to having noticed that Victor seemed to have lost his heart 
to her — then Trevaskis’s words, and Doris’s — and now Victor’s own ; 
she thought over all these, trying to reassure herselfo 

The fever, and some chance meetings with this lovely child, in which 
he had perhaps said a little more than he meant seriously or permanent- 
ly, had put those confused thoughts into his head. But how quickly 
he had fallen in with her suggestion of going to the sea-side ! how his 
spirits had risen at the prospect ! how quickly he had disappeared as 
soon as Mrs. Tillotson came upon the scene ! She could not dog them 
in this way once they had gained the shores of Port Callunga ! When 
there, she and Victor could take long walks on the sea-shore — far be- 
yond the chance of interruption. 

I know, my dear, it is very good of the archdeacon — these ‘ broth- 
erhood of man ’ assemblies,” Mrs. Tillotson was saying. ‘‘ But, oh ! how 
much more comfortable they would be if he could tell the poor people 
to take a bath — a good, brown-soap and flesh-brush bath, you know ! 
We could supply them from the Blind Asylum at sixpence each, Helen 
dear. . . . But although I could easily suggest this to the dear, good 
archdeacon, I suppose it would be rather difficult to speak to the people 
he invites, beforehand.” 

“ It would be rather a delicate social nwawce,” said Miss Paget, smiling 
as she roused herself to some perception of what was being said. 

“ This is the sort of thing into which I used to try to throw all the 
ardor of my life,” she thought, as she sat in the solitude of her own 
room, and contrasted the intense vibrant emotion which now flooded her 
thoughts with the wintry pallor of the half-hearted work in which she 
had been endeavoring to forget her own immediate interests. . . . “ And 
yet,” she reflected, ‘‘ I may in the end And myself like one of those 
couriers of medical science who poison themselves in a clinical experi- 
ment.” Then she fell into a long reverie, recalling how, from the first 
dawn of consciousness, one of her most abiding thoughts had been that 
she was one of the failures of life — one born to endure the sensation of 
defeat perpetually renewed. She argued that this was one reason why 
she was so sceptical of happiness for herself; why she had expected 
from the first that Victor’s affection would not last ; why, now that 
proof upon proof came to her that this fear was misplaced, she was still 
beset with hesitation and mistrust. 


THE SILENT SEA 


343 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

Yet, notwithstanding the arguments and considerations with which 
she fortified herself, Miss Paget did not sleep much that night. Every 
now and then Doris’s face would rise up before her, irradiated with a 
strange, spiritual light, the radiant eyes fixed lovingly on her face. She 
rose before it was dawn ; then after sunrise she fell into a short, troubled 
sleep. From this she awoke with an insupportable sense of wrong-doing. 
She seemed to herself to have, by some strange impulse, contradicted 
all the traditions of her past life. And why ? Why, indeed ! No human 
being could be really worth that fatal moment in which passion, like a 
volcanic eruption, sweeps before it all the tenderer growth of which the 
soul is capable. 

She bathed and dressed hastily, putting on a clinging robe of pale 
violet cashmere, giving no thought to the make or hue of the robe she 
wore. In reality, she could have chosen no tint more calculated to throw 
her pale cheeks and anxious, unquiet eyes into strong relief. The day 
was unbearably close, with that dull, suffocating kind of sultriness which 
comes in an Australian summer as the climax of a stretch of burning 
days and hot nights. She wandered out on the lawn. A quarter of an 
hour before the breakfast-gong sounded she was joined by Victor. 

‘‘ Oh, Helen, you must be ill !” he said, in a tone of alarm. “ Why 
not go to the sea-side this afternoon ?” he went on. ‘‘ The heat is in- 
tolerable ; at least, for those who are ill. You see, I am all but off the 
sick-list. Let me take care of you now, Helen, and be obedient as I 
have been to you.” 

‘‘ What is your prescription ?” she said, with a faint smile. 

First, that you are not to be worried in the slightest degree for any- 
thing or anybody. I’ll take Mrs. Tillotson off your hands, and we’ll 
set off for Port Callunga after breakfast.” 

She longed infinitely to adopt this plan, but she could not. As she 
noted the marked improvement in Victor’s appearance, her hopes re- 
vived. 

“ I cannot very well go this afternoon. I met a very charming young 
girl at the Masons’ yesterday — one who is staying at Lindaraxa, and I 
promised to call and see her. Wouldn’t you like to see the house once 
more you so often dreamed about 


344 


THE SILENT SEA 


“ Oh, don’t speak about dreams ! Last night, for the first time since 
I was knocked on the head, I slept without seeing demons and mon- 
sters. But, if you’ll allow me. I’ll drive with you to town. I have 
some matters of business to attend to before we go to the sea-side. I 
have your gracious permission, have I not?” he added smilingly, as 
Helen received his communication with doubtful looks. 

‘‘ Yes, if you don’t attempt to walk much. Drop me at Lindaraxa 
and then go on in the carriage, and call for me when you are ready.” 

Miss Paget reached the house a little after four. Miss North was out, 
and Doris was just then asleep. Mrs. North, a kindly, mouse-like little 
woman, who was in a chronic state of half-panic as to the results of her 
daughter’s brilliancy, confided her fears to Miss Paget in a rather mixed 
fashion. She felt sure Miss Lindsay was slightly worse, though she did 
not say so, and Rachel was always so hopeful as long as people kept out 
of bed. If only she would send for a doctor. 

‘‘ But your daughter is a doctor herself,” interposed Miss Paget. 

“ Oh, yes, my dear. But she has so many ideas, and that is always 
rather risky. Now, the first day I saw Miss Lindsay, when the dear 
child reached town — I can’t think of her as anything but a child ; I was 
staying with her mother at Ouranie when she was born. We came out 
on the same ship from England, and my husband died on the voyage. 
Every one said Australia would be so good for his lungs, and no doubt 
it would, only he never reached the country. And as for the Lindsays, 
they were like a providence to us, only more so in a way, for Providence 
doesn’t seem to mind much at times about us. Well, as I was saying, 
the dear child is asleep just now. Rachel has a great idea — you had 
better keep moving about and be chatty if you are ill, because, as I 
think she says, of the force of the will, and all that ; but if you are 
getting thinner all the time — ” 

“ Then, do you think Miss Lindsay is worse ?” 

“ I hardly know what to think, dear. If only Rachel would come 
back. . . . She seems to be praying so much to-day, and that is always 
sad, as it were, for a young person.” 

‘‘ Does your daughter go to church to pray, then ?” 

“ Oh, my dear, Rachel never prays ; she has got far beyond that. . . . 
She IS quite up to the cleverest doctors in many things,” answered Mrs. 
North, evidently quite scandalized at the inference which her own words 
had naturally conveyed. “ I mean Miss Lindsay. I have sent a mes- 
senger for Mrs. Challoner. ... I hope Rachel won’t think it foolish of 
me . . . but I feel very nervous.” 

“ But when I saw her yesterday — ” 

“ Yes, just so, my dear. It was when they came in yesterday I thought 
Doris looking more unusual than before, so to speak. But Rachel would 


THE SILENT SEA 


SU 


have it her plan was answering beautifully — I mean, keeping her about 
and seeing people, and all that, instead of laying up and having things 
made for her. ‘ Mother, the greatest happiness of your life is having 
slops made for people,’ Rachel says to me sometimes, laughing, and per- 
haps it is true in a way.” 

At the end of half an hour Mrs. North went to see whether Doris was 
awake and prepared to see her visitor. Ten minutes later Miss Paget 
was ushered into her room. 

‘‘I am so glad you have come,” she said, rising and holding Miss 
Paget’s hands in her own. 

Almost at the same moment they both noticed one pacing up and 
down in the garden opposite the window. It was Victor, who, having 
transacted his business in town, had called in returning for Miss Paget, 
as had been arranged. Instead of waiting in the carriage, he had, after 
a few minutes, wandered into the garden. He had that afternoon secured 
his passage by the Bendigo. The near prospect of setting sail made him 
restless, and the mere act of walking, with the tide of returning vigor in 
his veins, was a luxury. He was engrossed with thoughts of his journey, 
and did not once notice that the path which he was pacing traversed that 
portion of Lindaraxa which he had so often seen in his dreams. 

But Miss Paget recollected this well, and she turned to Doris with a 
question on her lips. The girl, with her face transfigured, her hands 
clasped, had sunk on a low chair near the half-open window. She was 
partly hidden by the curtains. At last she met Miss Paget’s fixed look 
with a little smile. 

‘‘ He is waiting for you, is he not?” she asked, her lips trembling a 
little. 

“ Yes,” answered Miss Paget, in a very low voice. 

There was silence for a few moments, during which the trilling of a 
canary in the little conservatory adjacent to the room seemed to rise and 
swell into strange volumes of sound. The extreme pallor of the young 
girl’s face, the look of deep, wistful pain in her eyes, the tightening clasp 
of her hands, all were apparent to Miss Paget. 

“ Dear, dear Victor ! God bless you, and take care of you forever,” 
murmured Doris in a low voice. Her lashes were wet as she looked up, 
but her smile had something of its old radiance. “ I think I understand 
why he does not wish to see me again,” she said slowly. 

“ But he does — he does !” It seemed to Miss Paget as if she had 
surely uttered the words aloud. But her lips had hardly moved. She 
no longer asked herself what she should do. She stood like a spectator 
watching a drama whose issue is still quite uncertain. 

‘‘But would you like to see him?” she forced herself to say after a 
long pause. 


346 


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Victor was slowly passing the window, going towards the gate. Doris 
looked at him fixedly till he was out of sight. Then, turning to Miss 
Paget, she said slowly, 

“ Do you know if he got a letter I wrote to him after — ” 

“ Yes, yes. It reached him shortly before he left the hospital. I think 
he was glad to get it,” added Miss Paget. 

‘‘ Then I think I would sooner do as he thinks best,” answered Doris. 

“ Ah, then you do not wish to see him ? lam afraid I may be fatiguing 
you.” 

“ Oh, no, you are not, indeed. You are very good to come — and will 
you come again, perhaps ?” 

Yes, to-morrow morning. In the afternoon we are going to the sea- 
side.” 

“ And do you think it would be wrong — ” 

She did not finish the question. Victor was strolling back. He was 
repeating some lines half aloud, a glad smile on his face. 

Miss Paget, white to the lips, stood regarding Doris as she sat bend- 
ing forward, her hands rigidly clasped, her whole soul in her eyes. Victor 
repassed the window, and after that Doris turned to Miss Paget. 

‘‘ I am glad to see him . . . but I think it would be perhaps . . . not 
quite right. I think he knows best.” 

The moral torpor which had fallen on Miss Paget seemed to affect her 
also physically. It was with diflSculty she spoke or moved. Suddenly 
this inertness left her. She was roused by an insane fear lest Miss North 
should return and ask Victor to come into the house. She now hastily 
bade Doris good-by, and exchanged a few words with Mrs. North as she 
left the house. She had of set purpose spoken that morning of her visit 
to Lindaraxa, and suggested that Victor should accompany her. The im- 
pulse was similar to that which leads some people to decide upon a cer- 
tain course of action by tossing a coin. . . . Victor had come to the 
house, and Doris had seen him, but had refrained from making any effort 
to speak to him. It seemed as if fate had willed that they should not 
meet. Doris would soon sail away, and live among new scenes and com- 
panions. She would forget with all the happy elasticity of youth. Even 
now she could not be said to be unhappy. And as for Victor, was it not, 
after all, quite apparent that fever, and not an absorbing passion, had 
been at work with him ? The stronger he grew, the less he seemed to 
be haunted by melancholy regrets. 

During the drive home, which Miss Paget lengthened by going round 
by way of the Botanic Park, both were apparently in high spirits. Victor 
was anxious to impress Miss Paget with the belief that he was nearly if 
not quite recovered, so that when, on getting to Callunga, he showed her 
his ticket as a passenger by the Bendigo, she should not be anxious on 


THE SILENT SEA 


S41 


his account. She, on her part, was striving with all her might to drive 
away all thoughts and recollections of Doris ; and at first her mind was 
obedient to her wishes. 

All through dinner she laughed and talked incessantly, although the 
atmosphere was heavier than ever, and even ice seemed to acquire some- 
thing of a sultry taste. But dinner was barely over when she found her- 
self struggling with a horrible, an all but irresistible, inclination to sob 
aloud. She made her escape on some pretext from the drawing-room, 
where Mrs. Tillotson and Victor were engaged in some languid game 
with lettered bits of pasteboard. The twilight was closing in, and the 
hot northeast wind was higher than ever. Some change was approach- 
ing; the sky was covered with heavy clouds; in the west a long, lurid 
line of sweltering crimson hung low in the horizon. Miss Paget wan- 
dered out among the trees for a few minutes. Then, going into her own 
room, she threw herself down on the bed and broke into hard, dry sobs, 
that convulsed her frame without bringing her any sense of relief. 

“ Oh, how could I — how could I ?” she moaned to herself, in a hoarse, 
broken voice. The look on Doris’s face, the pleading wistfulness of her 
eyes, were before her vividly, sweeping away the labored impositions with 
which she strove to appease her wounded conscience. 

There was a flash of lightning, followed by a long roll of thunder. A 
thunderstorm of great violence raged for more than a quarter of an hour. 
She stood looking out all the time, a feverish color mounting into her 
cheeks, her temples throbbing vehemently. During that interval her 
resolution was taken. She would not go to the sea-side to-morrow, and, 
after she had seen Doris once more, she would tell Victor, and then let 
things take their course. After all, if life became unbearable, there were 
a hundred paths that led out of it. With the thought a strange calm 
fell on her. She did not again return to the drawing-room ; she sent an 
excuse by a servant to Mrs. Tillotson and Victor. The thunderstorm had 
given her a nervous headache, and she thought she would be better if she 
slept ; but she did not sleep. She sat down and wrote a short note, and 
sent one of the servants across to the family chemist for a bottle of 
chloral. A good deal of this medicine had been used in the case of the 
maid who had been ill, but always under the doctor’s prescription. The 
chemist, however, sent the required amount on reading Miss Paget’s note, 
merely taking the precaution of writing a memorandum to ask that the 
phial should not be intrusted to the charge of the servants. 

“ It is evident,” thought Miss Paget on reading this, “ that one of the 
chief advantages of belonging to the classes is that one may get a dose 
of poison at will.” ‘‘ Poison !” She repeated the word, and turned the 
bottle over curiously. Often during the days in which she had waited 
in suspense as to Victor’s movements, the thought had come to her how 


348 


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little necessary she was to any one’s happiness. To-night she sat going 
over the thought of her own death, step by step. 

She saw the scene of her funeral : the hideous black-plumed carriages 
going slowly to the graveyard, then returning at a cheerful trot ; the 
mourners talking to each other complacently, with the relief of a disa- 
greeable duty over. Her father would be so much put out by the inter- 
ruption to the usual routine of his days that he would dine that evening 
with one of his married daughters, without being sure beforehand that 
he should not be offended by the sight and smell of mock-turtle soup. 
They would all put black on, and utter her name with a becoming sigh 
for a few weeks, and then they would begin to reckon what extra luxuries 
they could indulge in, with the addition her money would make to their 
incomes. Ah, how odious, malicious, and brutal human life was at bot- 
tom! Even the greatest catastrophe that overtook human beings was 
but the counterpart of the ruin that sometimes comes to an ant-heap. . . . 
When a dray-wheel passes over it, the ants who have not been crushed 
rush about distractedly ; but in a short time they are thieving the grubs 
of other insects, and carrying the booty down into their holes as usual. 

And Victor — how would her death affect him? Oh, he would be 
happy, as long as Doris was spared to him ! Miss Paget had been too 
willing to blind herself to the truth, but now she swept aside the meshes 
of imposition which her own hopes and the words spoken by Trevaskis 
and Doris had woven. It was only a misunderstanding — a deception 
practised perhaps by Trevaskis himself on Doris, that had led her to the 
conclusion as to Victor’s love for ‘‘ Helen.” Yes, Doris had heard him 
repeat that name during his unconsciousness. But this was only owing 
to the anxiety which possessed him to come and tell her that he no 
longer loved her, or rather, that he perceived he had never done so. . . . 
She knew so well. . . . Had she not every right to know ? What happi- 
ness had all the years of her life hitherto brought to her, that she should 
expect bliss in any form now — now that she was no longer young, and 
had never been beautiful ? Why did she expect more success ? Love 
and devotion, like every other good, were purchased. Yes, purchased by 
some definite charm. 

Miss Paget slept till long after sunrise. A cold, raw wind had suc- 
ceeded the excessive heat of the past few days. Mrs. Tillotson was loud 
in her exclamations as to Miss Paget’s ailing looks. 

“ My dear, you are certainly getting the influenza 1” she cried. 

Helen caught at the idea. The complaint was just then spreading in 
the province. She lay on a couch most of the day. She tried to make 
herself believe that the impulse which had carried her away on the pre- 
vious evening was spent ; but all the time she was conscious of a deep 
under-current, whose swell would bear her she knew not whither. 


THE SILENT SEA 


349 


There is no question of our going to the sea-side by starlight this 
evening, Helen ?” said Victor, coming into the drawing-room within an 
hour of sunset. Up to that time Miss Paget had remained in her own 
room. 

“ No. I fear I am going to be ill,” she answered slowly ; “ but before 
I am laid up — ” 

A servant brought in two notes on a little silver tray. Neither was of 
much importance, but as she glanced over one of them Miss Paget de- 
cided on her line of action. Half an hour later she was at Lindaraxa, 
and in Doris’s room. Mrs. Challoner was with her, and Shung-Loo came 
noiselessly into the room to draw the curtains and light the candles. 
Mrs. Challoner looked extremely anxious. On coming into Doris’s room 
early that morning she had found her very lightly clad, sleeping by the 
open window, with the cold west wind blowing over her. The change 
from the late sultry weather had been more than usually severe, and 
though Doris complained of no pain, her voice was seriously affected. 
Miss North was apprehensive that she had caught cold, and had, before 
going out on her professional round, regulated the temperature of the 
room, and left Mrs. Challoner in charge. 

But Doris, though conscious now and then of a heavy sensation in 
her head and chest, had been wrapped round with such happy dreams 
that her thoughts were constantly wandering from things around her. 
All day, at intervals, she had spoken to Mrs. Lucy and Shung-Loo as if 
they were back at Ouranie again and her mother quite near her. Now 
Mrs. Challoner awaited Miss North’s return with some anxiety. 

“ I will leave you two alone for a short time,” she said, divining by 
Miss Paget’s manner that she wished for this. 

“ I am afraid, dear, you are not well,” said Miss Paget, holding the 
girl’s hands in her own. The feverish brilliancy of Doris’s eyes and the 
flush in her cheeks fllled her with strangely conflicting emotions. She 
had come fully determined to tell how she had deceived both Doris and 
Victor. But she hesitated. ‘‘Your name is Doris, is it not?” she said. 
And then in rapid, confused phrases she told how she had been under 
some strange mistake. . . . And now she was quite sure Victor wished 
to see her — did not know that Doris was really here. 

“ Didn’t he know yesterday ?” asked Doris, her lips trembling a little. 

“ No ; and I want you to do me a favor, a great favor.” 

“ Oh, yes, only tell me. You are so good and kind. I shall be happy 
to do something for you.” 

At these words Miss Paget lost all self-control. Deadly pale, with the 
tears streaming down her face, her hands tightly clenched, she knelt at 
Doris’s feet. 

“ Oh, Doris, Doris, let me tell you,” she cried in a choking voice. “ I 


350 


THE SILENT SEA 


deceived you yesterday, and hid the truth from Victor, and now I cannot 
bear that he should know. But I must tell you.” 

She told her tale, with bent head, not sparing herself, but she said 
something of that hunger for love, that void in the life of the affections 
which from her earliest recollections had been with her like a chronic 
heartache. 

“ If only my mother had lived even for a few years, so that I might 
remember her arms around me, her lips pressed upon mine, I think all 
might have been different,” she said at the close. 

And then she found Doris’s arms around her neck, and the girl’s 
flower-soft face, wet with tears, pressed against her cheek. 

‘‘Dear, dear Helen, how terrible never to know your mother! No 
one else can ever make up for that. But, dearie, do not be miserable 
any longer. In the end all will be well. Tell Victor I should like to 
see him once. He need not know any more than you wish to tell him.” 

The tender sensibilities and delicate imaginative perceptions which 
formed so strong a feature of Doris’s nature seemed at this juncture to 
enable her to divine what she could not clearly understand. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

As Miss Paget drove back, she found herself from time to time 
blinded by tears, but when she reached the house the thought of her in- 
terview with Victor steadied her nerves. 

She bathed her face and put on a warmer dress, and then went into 
the library. She stood, as the housemaid turned up the gas, looking 
round the room with the half-belated air of one who is trying to realize 
the aspect of a partly forgotten scene. As the maid was leaving the 
room. Miss Paget asked her to see whether Mr. Fitz-Gibbon was in the 
drawing-room. She returned to say that only Mrs. Tillotson was there. 
She had been dozing, and woke up to ask if Miss Paget had returned. 

“ Tell her, Jane, that I will come into the drawing-room in ten min- 
utes ; and if Mr. Fitz-Gibbon is in his room, tell him I wish to see him 
in the library.” 

A few minutes later he came in. Miss Paget rose as he entered. 

“ I have some news for you, Victor.” 

“ Some news ? Letters ? Anything about Doris ? But no — ” 

“ Yes, about Doris.” 

“ Oh, Helen, is it from King George’s Sound ? But letters could not 
come yet.” 


THE SILENT SEA 


351 


No, it isn’t letters. When you saw the names of the passengers 
that day — ” 

“ Good God ! Helen, how pale you are ! Has anything happened to 
the ship ? Tell me in one word.” 

‘‘ No, no. Doris was not on that ship at all.” 

Not on that ship at all ! Why then — she has not gone?” 

No, she is at Miss North’s.” 

‘‘At Lindaraxa? She is there this moment? Oh, I must go! 1 
must go at once. Did you know before ? Don’t try to keep me back, 
Helen.” 

All inquiry and emotion were lost in the one overwhelming desire to 
see Doris. 

“ She has not been well. It is too late. She expects you in the 
morning,” said Miss Paget, almost in a whisper. The fiery impatience, 
the rapture that transfigured the young man’s face, were not so unbear- 
able for her as the thought : “ And it was for this I rent the child’s 
heart — only yesterday 1” 

“ Not well 1 But then I can see the light in her window. Helen, 
don’t try to persuade me. I couldn’t rest all night. I promise you I 
won’t make myself ill. Ill I How could I be ill, and Doris still on this 
side of the world ?” 

“ But let me tell you — there is something I want to explain,” said 
Miss Paget. “ You will perhaps think it strange that it was only to- 
day I went to her to ask if she were Doris. She was introduced to me 
as Miss Lindsay.” 

“ Introduced to you where ?” 

“ At Mrs. Mason’s . . . when we went there.” 

“ And I was under the same roof ? Oh, good heavens !” 

“ Yes, and yesterday — ” 

“ It was Doris you went to see ? And I waited outside, and she was 
in there all the time, and you did not know ? Oh, Helen, I must go, if 
only to hang round the place for a few minutes. ... I shall take a cab 
there and back.” 

It was impossible to detain him. It was eleven o’clock before he re- 
turned. He was pale and agitated, but he had seen the light in Doris’s 
window, and he had talked for an hour with Mrs. Challoner. It had 
been a strange meeting, each thinking the other was in distant latitudes 
on the sea. Doris had told her nothing, so after all he must have only 
dreamed that Doris had been beside him on the way to the hospital. It 
was strange, too, how the impression strengthened as he grew stronger. 
But all was now well. He repeated the words with a short, impatient 
sigh. Then he told Helen how he had fallen into the error about the 
Challoners’ departure. It was Challoner’s brother Bichard who had 


352 


THE SILENT SEA 


sailed with his two daughters. Mr. Robert Challoner was still too ill to 
travel. He was recruiting at the sea-side, and Mrs. Challoner had left 
him only yesterday. Doris had not been well, but he would see her to- 
morrow — to-morrow morning at nine. 

“ At nine to-morrow morning,” he repeated, walking up and down the 
room, too excited and preoccupied to rest. ‘‘ Just think, Helen, if we 
had gone to the sea-side still in ignorance ; and then four days later I 
should have been on the water. It would have been like that terrible 
little tragedy of ‘ Evangeline.’ I never could bear to read that poem.” 

‘‘ You were going — so soon ?” 

Yes. I knew you would think it was dangerous, but you see how 
well I am. I did not wish you to be uneasy, but here is my ticket, 
which I bought yesterday.” She looked at it with a strange expression 
in her eyes. “ What do I not owe you, dear Helen ? Think of it — to 
get to Mentone, and find Doris was in Adelaide when I left ! ... It 
would be too unbearable. ... I often wonder how Longfellow could bear 
to write that poem. It was too cruel. To find each other at last when 
one was dying and both were getting old.” 

But there are some cruel things in life, you know,” said Miss Paget 
in a low, colorless voice. 

“ Ah, but, Helen, think of the beautiful, happy things, the idylls 
lovely and tender, as if they were let down to earth straight from the 
inner courts of heaven. . . . How strange you shouldn’t have known at 
once it was Doris. There is no one else in the least like her. And you 
made friends with each other as soon as you met ? Tell me, Helen, did 
you think she was really ill to-day ?” 

“ A little feverish, perhaps.” 

“ Feverish ! After I parted from Mrs. Challoner I had the strongest 
impulse to go back again, and implore her to tell me exactly what she 
thought. But—” 

“ If you don’t take care, Victor, you will be ill yourself to-mor- 
row — ” 

‘‘ And not be able to go in the morning ? Oh, how absurd !” He 
broke into a low, glad laugh at the thought, and began to hum the 
words, 

“ ‘ My dust would hear her and beat, 

Had I lain for a century dead; 

Would start and tremble under her feet, 

And blossom in purple and red.’ ” 

“ You repeat the lines as if you believed them ; to me there is some- 
thing absolutely revolting in such hyperbole, ‘ Had I lain for a century 
dead’ — as if we did not all know what happened to us long before we 
were a century dead !” 


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353 


Something cold and strained in her voice struck him. But he an- 
swered in a light tone, 

Well, but is this a time to talk of being dead a century or a thou- 
sand years? . . . Helen, I have so often thought I should like you and 
Doris to be friends. And now you are, without any help from me.” 

He would have talked to her of Doris all night. But as the clock 
chimed twelve he obeyed her injunctions to try and get to sleep. It 
was some time before his glad restlessness would allow him to close his 
eyes, but at last he fell into the deep, dreamless slumber of happy ex- 
haustion. 

It was a strangely beautiful world into which he woke next morning. 
All the sudden harshness of the atmosphere had died away. The mel- 
low warmth of summer, tempered by a cooling wind, lay over all the 
land. The delicate primrose of the dawn still lingered in the east. The 
softly folded hills below this divine glow, their valleys and curves touched 
with the tremulous vapor of early morning, had something of a dream- 
like indistinctness. But the sleeping town in the foreground was sharply 
distinct in the clear air. 

‘‘ She is there, and I shall see her in less than four hours,” Victor said, 
looking across towards North Terrace from the brow of the little wooded 
knoll that rose to the south of the house. 

The first sun-rays were catching the wide expanse of the sea westward. 
Above it, as if in a faint reflection of the east, a wide band of pale rose- 
lilac encircled the horizon. As the sun rose higher, this space of exqui- 
site color was beaten into transparent flakes of gold, till they were lost 
in the blue air, like a legend of visionary beauty. All was surpassingly 
lovely. It seemed as if the magic of earth and air and sea was for the 
first time fully revealed to him. He looked on the most familiar scenes 
with the keen enjoyment with which one catches the first aspects of a 
new country before any of the old links of habit have dulled the incisive- 
ness of outline. The tall, snowy groups of Christmas lilies, the deeply 
accented forms of the Nipa palms round a fountain, the wide leaves and 
lotus buds of Eastern lilies on the water’s surface, the rose-bushes loaded 
with cataracts of roses, the deep bruckmansia bells, the great beds of 
heliotrope, all poured their poignant exhalations on the air, till the color, 
the fragrance, and the almost incredible thought of soon seeing Doris, 
overcame him with an intoxication of happiness that bordered upon 
pain. 

But would the time never pass ? At breakfast he heard Mrs. Tillotson 
as if from a great distance urging him to eat. He heard her bewailing 
the abandonment of the sea-side plan. “ For I am sure, Helen dear, you 
are not well. But if it’s influenza you are getting, let me advise you be- 
forehand not to take antipyrine.” 

23 


354 


THE SILENT SEA 


Victor looked at Miss Paget, but he could hardly discern whether she 
were pale or flushed. 

“ You ought to walk among the trees and flowers, Helen, and hear 
the birds sing,” he said to her, as they rose from the table. 

“Their songs are for you, not me,” she said, with her unconquerable 
little smile. 

But the next moment she was in her own room, lying prone on her 
bed, beyond the relief of words or tears. It was not one emotion — it 
was all the long-hoarded bitterness of a lifetime that seemed to be dis- 
tilled into a cup which she must drain to the very dregs. Her loveless 
childhood, her spoiled youth, the sordid shifts of poverty which had 
burned themselves into her memory at the most susceptible period of 
life ; day by day and hour by hour she lived them all over again in one 
of those swift moments of recollection, in which the past is seen and 
felt rather than recalled. Why had she been always the puppet of a 
destiny, relentless in denying her one complete and unmutilated joy — 
one day, nay, one whole hour of nvid happiness? 

And now — now to crown all, what had come to her? Through the 
long years in w'hich she had been starved of affection and the tender 
graces of life she had never lost sight of the wish to help others — to be 
to few or many a stay in the hour of need. She seemed to see a long 
defile of the old, the maimed, the morally paralyzed, to whom she had 
given alms. 

But how poor and meagre and profitless it had all been ! A few score 
of poor people were a little better housed, a little better fed, in cleaner 
apparel for a few days or weeks, than they would have been without her 
aid. But always she had asked herself in the end, what did it signify ? 
Now, for the first time, she seemed to see clearly what had been at the 
root of her dissatisfaction. She had longed to give moral help — longed 
to stand between poor, driven human creatures and the malice of their 
destiny — to shelter them from the storms that were driving them to 
shipwreck. And now ? It was not only the cruel deception she had 
practised on the previous day. But at this moment, revolt and despair, 
and some dark tinge of hatred for those whose lives were crowned with 
a happiness denied to her, were surging up in her heart. What subtle 
thrill of hope had come to her when she observed yesterday the greater 
hold that the fever seemed to have taken on Doris ? 

“ Oh, no, no ! not that — not that !” she said to herself, half aloud, in 
a choked voice. Then she opened the drawer of her mirror, and took 
out the bottle of chloral, and held it in her hand as if weighing it. 

A fever, a lingering tumor, the mistake of a railway pointsman, the 
bite of a dog, the most trivial accident, the most malignant disease, 
these might at any moment end existence. Then why not an overdose 


THE SILENT SEA 


355 


of chloral ? It would be a far more kindly and judicious accident than 
those that nature so often and so ruthlessly employed. And there 
would be no scandal to lacerate the feelings of those who had never 
loved her. 

“ The deceased lady, who was widely known for her social gifts and 
her unfailing benevolence, had been suffering for some time from insom- 
nia,” etc., etc. She knew so well the decorous sort of newspaper para- 
graph in which the event would be recorded. I am not sure, but I am 
afraid that she took a great deal of antipyrine after all,” she imagined 
Mrs. Tillotson saying, with a lugubrious shake of the head. And as this 
crossed her mind she began to laugh. There was a tap at her door, and 
she put away the bottle of chloral before calling out “ Come in.” Mrs. 
Tillotson opened the door, saying, 

Victor is going to town, and do you know, dear. I’m not quite sure 
he should go alone. He seems to me a little ligbt-headed — smiling and 
singing so much — quite different.” 

‘‘Yes, but it is the sort of light-headedness that seldom lasts,” re- 
turned Miss Paget, hardly defining to herself the special significance she 
attached to the words. 

But when she met Victor in the hall, hat in hand, ready to set out to 
see his Doris, with all the radiance of youth and happiness unclouded 
by a single fear in his face, she was conscious for a moment of a strange 
pang of apprehension as to what might await him. 

He proposed walking across the Park Lands. But now that the last 
moments of waiting had come, he could not bear the delay. It could 
not matter if he got to Lindaraxa a little earlier. He hailed the first cab 
he saw, and was at the gate in twelve minutes, having repeatedly urged 
the cabman to faster speed. A carriage was waiting near the gate, and 
half-way between it and the house Victor met a rosy-visaged old gentle- 
man, whom he would have passed with a bow, had he not been held fast 
by the arm. 

“This is a nice thing, young gentleman, to try and pass me with a 
lift of the hat — the venerable doctor who ushered you into the world, 
how many years ago ?” 

“ Not more than half a century, doctor,” said Victor, half distracted 
by the delay. He speedily got away, after giving more or less incohe- 
rent answers as to his reported journey to England. The hall-door stood 
open, and before he could ring, Mrs. Challoner, who had seen him com- 
ing, came out to him. 

“I know I am a little early; but perhaps Doris is ready to see me?” 
be said, bis voice shaken by tbe passionate throbbing of bis heart. 

“ Oh, yes, she has been talking of you, Victor ; come in here for a 
moment.” 


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She showed him into the drawing-room, and hastily left the room. 
His overpowering happiness made him deaf and blind, or he would have 
seen that Mrs. Challoner’s eyes were red and dim, and her voice un- 
steady. She had on the previous evening heard Victor’s little story 
with the strongest interest and sympathy. She could not then bear to 
dash his joy by expressing any of the fears that oppressed her as to the 
unfavorable development of Doris’s illness. But now concealment would 
be impossible. Doris was threatened with congestion of the lungs. She 
had been delirious through the night, and the old medical friend whom 
Miss North had called in for consultation took a very gloomy view of 
the case. On going into the symptoms he declared that she had been 
taken about when she should be in bed, and that the insidious inroads 
the fever had made on her constitution were all against her rallying- 
power. 

But Miss North still kept up her courage. She knew her old friend 
was of the rigidly old-fashioned order, who go in for the heroic remedies 
of bed and blisters on the shallowest pretext — one of the people, in 
short, to whom new ideas and theories figure hazily as a kind of moral 
lymph, to be used under quarantine regulations for the gradual vaccina- 
tion of respectable society *, unfit for a family practitioner at first hand. 
Even at this moment, as Miss North came out of Doris’s room, she was 
smiling half abstractedly at the neatness of this comparison. She re- 
solved to note it down for future use. When she saw Mrs. Challoner 
with overflowing eyes, she lost her patience a little. 

“Really, Mrs. Challoner, you and mother and Doctor Mellersh get 
upon one’s nerves a little, with your long faces. . . . The child is look- 
ing quite radiant just now ; who is this Victor she keeps on talking to 
now and then ?” 

“ Oh, Miss North, I come to ask you to break the news to him. He 
is waiting to see Doris — looking so happy and confident — it breaks my 
heart.” 

“ My dear lady, the human heart is in reality a tremendously strong 
muscle, though people speak so glibly of breaking it, like egg-shell 
china,” said Miss North with kindly gravity. And then, always on the 
alert as she was to seize any new possibility, she explained that she 
should say nothing to Victor beyond telling him that Doris was rather 
feverish, and must not talk much. But he might sit in her room at in- 
tervals. . . . His happiness and confidence, and Doris’s pleasure in see- 
ing him, would all help to swell those odic forces that are the real fund 
of life. 

Surely no other ten minutes in the course of all the ages were so long 
as those that elapsed between Victor’s entering the house and his being 
taken by Miss North into Doris’s room. He followed his guide closely, 


THE SILENT SEA 357 

a blinding mist around him, the surging as of great billows in his 
ears. 

“ Oh, Victor dear, I am so glad you have come. . . .” 

The words came to him low and broken, and Doris held out both 
hands to him with a strangely beautiful smile. He knelt down by her 
side and covered them with kisses. Then the mist slowly cleared away. 
They were alone. Doris was beside him, softly calling him by name. 
But for a little time he could make no reply. And then, as he grew 
calmer, and held her hands and looked into her face, his joy, which was 
almost unbearable in its intensity, received the first little check. Doris 
was supported by pillows in a deep arm-chair, in one of the white cash- 
mere robes in which he had so often seen her in the early mornings at 
Stonehouse. Her eyes were strangely brilliant, but her face was no 
longer fiushed ; and, oh, what was it — what was it that smote him, as if 
a hand fumbling awkwardly had suddenly touched his heart? A look 
of evanescence ... a smile remote from all earthly interests. . . . 

“ Darling — you — have been ill. . . . You are — ill now,” he said in a 
broken voice, with an odd pause between the words. 

“ But, Victor, don’t be sorry. I cannot tell you how beautiful it is. 
Always at night, and sometimes in the day, I hear mamma’s voice as in 
the dear old times. And now you have come there is nothing more to 
wish for.” 

“ Except that you should be well and strong, my own dear one. . . . 
Oh, Doris, how did you come to think that there should ever be room in 
my heart for any one but you? Your letter — your dear little, cruel let- 
ter .. . see, I have carried it next my heart . . . but now I want you 
to take it back — to tell me that you understand.” 

Poor child, she whose ways and thoughts and associations had been 
so far removed from those of ordinary life — how could she grasp those 
complex and confiicting interests ? But as she looked into Victor’s face, 
as she listened to the sound of his voice, telling her with eager rapidity 
his reasons for wishing to start for town, and the mystery which still 
hung over those days during which he lay in helpless darkness, she knew 
that she had been in error in some of her thoughts. 

‘‘Did you not like my letter, then, Victor?” she said, taking it from 
him and turning it over. 

“ Yes, dearest, because, though you were under a strange delusion, you 
still somehow trusted me. . . . After all, I will not give up this letter till 
I have many more in its place. To-morrow, when you are better, you 
shall write at the end, ‘ I know you love only me.’ ” 

“Would you like it better if I wrote that? Then let me write it 
now.” 

She took a pencil and traced the words at the bottom of the letter. 


358 


THE SILENT SEA 


Her small, quaintly formal writing was a little uneven, but it sufficed. 
Before the time expired when Victor should leave, Doris had told him 
of the strange way in which she thought she saw him in the iron pas- 
sage, and of her journey with him to Broombush Creek. 

“ It was so strange and lonely part of the way — oh, so dark and strange 
over that gray, gray Silent Sea ! And then it was silent no longer . . . 
it was full of loud, shrill calls . . . the voices of the wind . . . calling, 
calling, as if they, too, were lonely and sorry, and they could find no 
home, and no answer.” 

“ Oh, my Doris, and I was there, and could do nothing for you !” 

“ But don’t be too sorry, Victor dear. ... I hear it in your voice. . . 
x\nd you know after a little time it was all beautiful again. Mother 
came to me . . . mother, with her face as glad and beautiful as the day 
she went away.” 

Her breathing became a little hurried, and her cheeks fiushed. She 
lay back silent for some little time. The high, clear, musical whistle of 
a blackbird came in through the half-open window. And then she spoke 
again, her voice a little huskier and more hurried. 

“ I am glad you are at Ouranie, Victor. ... You see, it is full of 
flowers ... if you open the window a little more. . . .” 

The sunshine was now beyond the prescribed temperature of the room. 
He rose and opened the window wide, drawing back the curtains ; and 
lo ! there were the shrubs and blossoms he had so often seen in his frag- 
mentary dream. The air was embalmed with orange-blossoms. Great 
rose-bushes were still heavy with blooms; the sprays of an Ophir rose- 
bush lay half across the path in torrents of flaming, wide-opened roses. 
The gladioli, white, scarlet, and crimson, stood in clustering masses waist- 
high ; Banksia roses in pink and honey-pale masses were lying in swathes 
close to the window. One touch that now came back to him as part of 
his dream he missed — a magnolia-tree with a few wide-opened chalices ; 
but looking a little to the left of the orange-grove, he saw it — a few late 
blooms with their great petals still folded, like the wings of a dove that 
has come with a message from afar. Then, seeing that his dream was 
so literally reproduced, something of vague, cold dread seized him. 

It was not until the next day, however, that he felt any real apprehen- 
sion of the great calamity that was to fall on him. In the morning he 
was told that Doris was worse. During the afternoon he was allowed 
to see her for a short time. She was then half-unconscious, but on see- 
ing him she smiled, and held out her hands. A little afterwards she 
seemed to be talking to her mother. 

“ Say it again, maman darling,” she murmured ; and then she repeated 
the words slowly, as if saying them after some one, “ ‘ Dors, dors, doux 
oiseau de la 'prairie, . . . Dieu tHveillera dans son hon temps P ” 


THE SILENT SEA 


359 


Victor endeavored to control his grief, in order to save her pain. It 
was in the deepening twilight she last spoke to him. Consciousness had 
then partly returned, and she knew by the sound of his voice that the 
billows of grief were around him. 

“ Do not be so sorry, dear Victor,’’ she said softly. 

“ Oh, Doris, Doris !” was all that he could say in reply. 

“ When maman was going away, she put her hands on my head, and 
said, ‘ God bless and keep my darling.’ Let me say the same to you, 
Victor.” 

He knelt beside her, and she placed her hands on his head, and said 
in a tremulous voice, 

“ God bless and keep my darling !” 

Before the sun had set on the next day she had awakened from the 
brief dream which comprised the span of her serene and guileless life. 


CHAPTER XLVL 

After the first strange days were over, Victor found his thoughts 
constantly turning on schemes of unmasking Trevaskis. The inquiry 
which had been undertaken by the police, aided by the manager’s eager 
suggestions, had, of course, come to nothing. It now seemed that there 
was no certainty at all as to the departure by any of the sailing-ships of 
the young man who had presumably personated Victor. 

At last he resolved to prosecute a search on his own account. Day 
and night he was pursued by the thought that Doris’s untimely death 
and his own irretrievable bereavement were largely due to the chain of 
circumstances woven by the action of the man who, for his own pur- 
poses, had first rendered him insensible and then kept him so long 
drugged. 

“ I could not get him hanged for it. Perhaps the worst villains always 
die in their beds with troops of admiring friends round them ; but I could 
get him disgraced — branded — branded for life as a thief and a cheat and 
an impostor,” he would think over and over again in a dull, mechanical 
round, till at times he was almost beside himself with the thirst for ven- 
geance. He often reasoned with himself that Doris’s memory — her last 
loving words, and the pressure of her beloved hands as she uttered them, 
should serve as a benediction to keep this passion at bay. 

But nevertheless it returned on him again and again. About the end 
of January he went to look for Kenneth Campbell. He had been re- 
ported dead by the special policeman who had undertaken the investiga- 


360 


THE SILENT SEA 


tion, but he resolved to search for himself. His mother would be soon 
on her way out to Australia. He resolved to occupy the time till she 
arrived in hunting up every possible clue. After that he had no plans. 
His uncle had from time to time put off carrying out the instructions of 
the will under which Victor was heir to the late Mr. Shaw Drummond ; 
but his income on coming of age, irrespective of the property in Mr. 
Stuart Drummond’s hands, was more than enough for his wants, so that 
he granted the delay without a second thought. 

He got on Kenneth Campbell’s track at Nilpeena, where he had stayed 
two days after leaving Colmar. Seventy miles farther on towards town 
he was met by the news of his death. But, after fully testing the evi- 
dence, he became convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity — that 
it was a man of the same name who had died in the Burra hospital, not 
the old ex-shepherd. At last he found some one who knew where the 
brother lived with whom Kenneth had farmed for a short time. This 
was in the Wimmera District in Victoria. 

It was a long, uninteresting journey, and the results very uncertain. 
But he was now possessed by that dogged obstinacy which, in one who 
has the two strains of Scottish and Celtic origin, is sometimes driven to 
the verge of a mania. He had not yet picked up a single clue that did 
not end in a “ possum-track up a gum-tree.” He had sometimes thought 
of setting off himself to meet the wool-ship that was bound for Plymouth, 
and engaging a detective to meet the other at Cape Town. But he was 
now convinced that no one had really taken the journey, and that the 
whole ruse had been managed by Trevaskis with the same adroitness 
with which he had compassed>the rest. 

When he reached Thomas Campbell’s little farm he found Kenneth — 
now a confirmed invalid — so wrapped in the study of Persian theoso- 
phy that he could hardly make him carry his thoughts back to the jour- 
ney he had taken with a sick man from near the broken-down whim. 
He received the news of Doris’s death without any surprise. But though 
he said it was ground for rejoicing when those who were beloved of 
Heaven were called to their real home, some tears slowly coursed down 
his cheeks. When he heard that Shung-Loo had departed for China he 
lifted his eyes, and clasped his hands in fervent supplication that the 
seed of knowledge which he had tried to sow in his heart might blossom 
and bear fruit abundantly. 

“ But I believe there is not a nation under the sun without true wor- 
shippers. To-day I read the life of a Persian saint who sat seven years 
long in a hermitage with stopped ears, day and night calling upon Allah, 
till wall and door at last to him were one. Ay, the cup of spiritual 
knowledge is not put into the hand of man in the midst of vanities.” 

Victor was very patient with Kenneth, because of those tears he had 


THE SILENT SEA 


361 


shed ; but in the end all he could extract from him was that the man 
who had cared for him in the little weather-board hut was strong-look- 
ing and thick-set, and that he spoke as the Cornish miners do who have 
grown to manhood before they leave England. 

“Did he remind you of any one?” asked Victor. 

Kenneth deliberated. “Yes, he did. As soon as I saw him he re- 
minded me of the captain at the Colmar Mine — Trevaskis.” 

Victor gave a low exclamation. He had, in the course of the inqui- 
ries he had made, learned that Trevaskis had a brother, who stayed for 
some days at the mine on two occasions. Three days after his inter- 
view with Kenneth he had engaged the services of a private detective, 
who had the reputation of being the cleverest in South Australia, to as- 
certain where Daniel Trevaskis had been employed during the two weeks 
from December 9th to December 23d last year. 

It is now pretty well established that the cleverest detectives in Aus- 
tralia are the most easily recognized members of the communities in 
which they reside. In this case the detective returned to town in a few 
days, reporting that he had been blocked in his inquiries by being every- 
where publicly denounced as a spy by the miners, and threatened with 
the most unpleasant consequences if he did not at once clear out. Dan 
Trevaskis had been off and on at a claim near the broken-down whim, 
but he had left it, and made frequent journeys to places at a distance 
from the mine. Now he was staying with his brother, preparatory to 
going to England in a short time. 

On hearing this, Victor at once started for the mine. He would at 
least see this man for himself. He stayed at the inn till he saw Trevas- 
kis coming to dinner. Seeing that he was alone, he did not meet him, 
but went out through the bar-door as Trevaskis entered by the main en- 
trance. Victor walked up towards the mine, keeping a sharp lookout 
on the men he saw about. Presently he noticed a little in advance of 
him one who had been a fellow-passenger by the mail-coach from Nil- 
peena. He had not then taken much notice of him. As a matter of 
fact, he was often so sunk in thoughts of Doris during these solitary 
wanderings as to be quite oblivious of his surroundings. 

Now he was struck by something secretive, furtive, and sinister in the 
man’s appearance. He was extremely thin, closely shaven, and wore a 
loose alpaca overcoat, with a rather bulgy look about the breast. He 
carried a small bag, and kept glancing rapidly from side to side, and 
walking faster and faster as he drew nearer the Colmar Mine. He did 
not go to the mine or the offices, however, but struck off in an easterly 
direction towards the enclosure round the cave room. 

But before the stranger reached this, Victor’s attention was drawn by 
the figure of a man who disappeared into the engine-room as he drew 


362 


THE SILENT SEA 


near it. He instantly followed him. Roby met him with an outstretched 
hand ; but Victor, merely grasping it in passing, said, 

“ Isn’t that Mr. Daniel Trevaskis ?” 

‘‘ Sure ’nough ’tis,” answered Roby, looking after him with amazement. 

Dan heard the answer and the question, and quickened his footsteps, 
going out by a side-door of the engine-room, and into the purser’s office, 
the door of which was open. 

Victor, too excited to remember the- nearest way, lost a little time. 
As soon as Dan got inside he rushed from one store-room to the other. 
When he gained the manager’s office he tried to lock the door, but the 
key w^as missing. The door leading into the iron passage was half ajar, 
however, and rushing through this, he closed and bolted it behind him. 

Without a moment’s pause, Victor rushed back and got a large mallet 
out of one of tlje store-rooms. With a few strokes he splintered the 
door, and then he laughed aloud — a laugh not pleasant to hear. 

“ Now you are in the snare !” he cried out. 

He hurried through the passage. As soon as he entered the cave room 
he knew that this was the place in which he had been lying for thirteen 
days. This was the accursed place, and this man who had fled into it 
had been his jailor. 

He peered around in the darkness. The light from the panes of glass 
in the enclosure of the entrance to the cave room did not penetrate be- 
yond a third part of the cavity ; the rest was in impenetrable gloom. 

‘‘ You are in there, Daniel Trevaskis . . . and you may as well come 
out!” cried Victor. 

There was no answer. 

“ You hound ! This is where you and that infamous blackguard, your 
brother, drugged me and kept me.” He was beside himself with rage 
as he thought of all that had followed upon this. “If you wait here 
till the day of judgment you won't escape me again 1” 

After waiting for twenty minutes, Victor began to consider that it 
would be better to get a light, and call on some of the men for assistance, 
or, at any rate, to bear witness to what should happen. The one thing 
he was determined on was not to let this man escape him till he should 
get him under police surveillance, and take out a warrant against him. 

“ He cannot get out; he must come back along the passage,” he re- 
flected. At that moment he thought he heard a curious sound of tap- 
ping on one side of the iron wall round the entrance to the cave room. 
He went back as far as the first little window, and then he saw Trevas- 
kis coming, his face drawn and gray. 

“ Who has been smashing in doors here ?” he said, in a choked voice. 

“ I have. ... I am on your trail nowq you lying scoundrel ! You cow- 
ard, to come and attack a sleeping man !” 


THE SILENT SEA 


363 


“ I never did, as sure as God is in heaven !” 

“ How do you dare to mention his name with such a falsehood? You 
stole into the office, you flung me down when I was half asleep, and then 
you drugged me — you and your brother. But I have him — I have him 
now like a rat in a hole.” 

Twice Trevaskis attempted to speak, but his throat seemed to be full 
of ashes. 

‘‘You have no proof — not one!” he gasped at last. “You go on the 
paltry fact that my brother came in here when he saw you. Let me tell 
you he has been drinking hard, and has had a touch of the ‘ horrors.’ ” 

“ Gord a’mighty 1 what it is to be born a liar ! You don’t get into no 
scrape without bein’ able for to crawl out somehow,” said poor Dan with a 
groan, in his hiding-place. 

It was not bodily fear that had made him flee, but the conviction 
which he had all along that he would never, face to face with Victor, be 
able to deny that he had been with him during his imprisonment in the 
cave room — that and the terror of exposure for his boy. He had been 
well paid by Trevaskis for his assistance, and now that the gold had all 
been safely disposed of, Dan was to start next week by a mail-boat, so as 
to meet Dick when he landed in England. 

The sound which Victor had heard ten minutes earlier had been going 
on all this time. It was the sound made by a chisel being inserted under 
a sheet of iron, to force the nails back that held it in its place. Now the 
sheet was bodily removed, a man came quickly through the opening, and 
went hurrying through the entrance of the cave room. Victor at once 
advanced from the passage, fearing his quarry should escape him. The 
first glance showed him that the man, who was on his knees lighting a 
small lamp, was his fellow-passenger from Nilpeena. As soon as the lamp 
was lit, leaving it on the ground, he began groping on all-fours, feeling 
the ground, and turning the loose earth over with long, lean fingers. 
Then he cried, with a voice that had the vibrations of the cry of a 
wounded animal, 

“ Ah, my God, my God ! it is all gone ! All stolen — all stolen ; gone 
forever 1” 

Victor then knew that this was Webster, and he stood watching him in 
the semi-darkness with a sort of fascinated horror. Trevaskis also crept 
nearer to look and listen, half fearful that this strange apparition — the 
gaunt-looking man who had effected an entrance through the wall, who 
had come provided with a lamp, who crouched on the ground burrowing 
in the earth, whose voice had a shrill, savage ring — was somehow in col- 
lusion with Fitz-Gibbon. 

The man rose and carried the lamp farther into the cave room. His 
hand shook so that the light flickered like an aspen leaf. When he 


364 


THE SILENT SEA 


reached the narrow portion running northward, he knelt down and bur- 
rowed in the loose earth, groping on his knees, his breath coming in 
labored gasps. 

“ No, no, no ! not an ounce — not an ounce !” he shrieked, in an insane 
voice that had lost all balance of modulation. Then he moaned and 
sobbed in a horrible way. 

Presently, from a dim recess beyond him, Dan crept out, shaken and 
unnerved. Could this be Fitz-Gibbon, who had suddenly gone mad, or 
was it an emissary of the Evil One come to destroy him with terror 
because of the part he had played in this hateful underground place? 
In any case Dan could no longer remain where he was, for this man, 
with his awful cries and carrying a light, was steadily drawing nearer to 
him. He glided stealthily from his hiding-place, keeping in the shadow, 
and hoping to avoid notice. But in the obscurity he stumbled over 
some of the litter with which the floor was encumbered. 

Webster instantly started up with a maniacal cry, drawing some 
weapon from under his coat. 

“ Leave this, man to me,” said Victor, making a quick motion for- 
ward. 

He was too late ; it was a five-chambered revolver, loaded and cocked, 
that Webster had drawn. Dan was shot through the heart, and fell 
without a sound. The next moment Victor felt a sharp, stinging pain 
in his head. He knew no more till he became conscious weeks later, to 
find that he had been nursed back from the brink of the grave by Miss 
Paget. As soon as the news of the catastrophe at the Colmar Mine — 
Dan murdered, Victor dangerously wounded, and Webster killed by his 
own hand — reached town. Miss Paget came without a moment’s delay, 
accompanied by one of the best surgeons in Adelaide. For many days 
the young man hovered between life and death ; but, with a devotion 
and endurance extraordinary even in a woman, Helen stood sentinel 
between him and the roar of greedy Acheron. For days and nights in 
succession she scarcely quitted his bedside. Later, she had the assistance 
of a trained nurse. 

In the earlier stages of Victor’s convalescence his mother reached 
Adelaide, and at once came to him at the new Colmar Inn — the one for 
which Scroogs had obtained a license while it was still a curious medley 
of tents and weather-board cribs. Now it had a frontage of stone rooms, 
and in the best of one of these the patient was lying on a couch under 
a window looking eastward, towards that great flat space, interspersed 
with naked patches of reddish earth, broken up here and there into gap- 
ing fissures. 

Victor lay looking out on the scene with the languid, unseeing gaze 
of one who has, without much heart in the affair, battled his way back 


THE SILENT SEA 


365 


to a fresh hold on life. Presently his notice was attracted by a half- 
stifled sigh, and, looking round, he saw that his mother, who had been 
reading, had let the bt)ok close on her lap, and was looking at him with 
dimmed eyes. Mrs. Fitz-Gibbon was a very handsome, well-preserved 
woman, who at forty-eight might pass for being ten years younger. 

“ Well, mother, you look very solemn,’^ he said, with a feeble smile. 

Oh — dear Victor — I am so thankful !” 

There was a suspicious break in her voice. 

‘‘Is it usual to weep, mater, when one is thankful?” 

“ You naughty boy, you begin to be saucy already.” 

“ Already ? How many hundred fowls have I devoured within the 
last two weeks ?” 

There was a little pause, and then the mother ispoke again. 

“ Of course there were other thoughts as well as gratitude. When I 
look at you . . . and compare you with the boy from whom I parted 
less than a year ago — ” 

“ Handsome as an Apollo ” were the words that rose to the mother’s 
lips ; but though she had been exceedingly vain of her son’s good looks 
from his childhood upward, she was of Puritan descent, and she checked 
herself. 

“ Isn’t it strange,” she went on, after a little pause and in a different 
tone of voice, “ that you should ever have come to a place like this at 
all, and that, having come once, you should have been nearly assassi- 
nated, and having come again, you should have been nearly murdered ?” 

“And yet, mother,” said Victor after a little silence, “I would not 
for all the world have missed coming here.” 

He meant this to be the prelude to telling his mother about Doris; 
but even the memory of strong emotion invaded his brain with an irre- 
sistible languor. He sighed heavily, and turned away from the win- 
dow so that he should not see that great level, naked plain — the Silent 
Sea — in which the supreme joy of life had come to him — and eluded 
him. 

“I believe Helen would scold me if she heard me broaching such 
topics at all,” said Mrs. Fitz-Gibbon presently. She had never possessed 
that finer tact which leads people to perceive without making perception 
a matter of comment, and to understand those half-shades which so often 
convey more than stronger colors. She reflected a little as to the cause 
of her son’s continued silence, and then said, “ I must ask your forgive- 
ness for one thing, Victor — that letter I wrote when I knew less than 
nothing of dear Helen.” 

“What was it you said, mother?” 

Mrs. Fitz-Gibbon laughed softly before she replied, 

“ How like you are to your dear father in some things ! That was 


366 


THE SILENT SEA 


exactly his way of making it pleasant for one who had been disagreeable. 
He would pretend to forget all about the affair !” 

At this moment Miss Paget came in with a great boxful of flowers 
that had come from Lancaster House. At sight of them the vision of 
those other flowers, that used to come to this arid wilderness in all their 
delicate beauty for Doris, rose before Victor with strange distinctness. 
She brought him a plume of white lilac — one of those late blossoms that 
bud and come into bloom after the almanac says they are over. Its 
faint yet poignant fragrance seemed to sum up for him all the unspeak- 
able longing and regret of which a lifetime is capable. 

‘‘ Was it worth all the pains you have taken to keep me in life, Helen 
he asked as she stooped to arrange his pillow. 

“That means you ought to have a bowl of chicken-broth,” she an- 
swered, laughing. Then, in a lower tone, “ There is nothing else in life 
worth so much for me.” 

Four months later they were married. The paper which announced 
the marriage contained an enthusiastic description of a testimonial pre- 
sented to William Trevaskis, J. P., on the occasion of his retirement from 
managing the Colmar Mine. The Chairman of Directors, in making the 
presentation, said that Mr. Trevaskis w’as a man who had long ago made 
his mark in mining. The indefatigable industry, the downright John- 
Bull honesty which had characterized his management of the Colmar 
Mine, were beyond all praise. While deeply regretting his loss as a 
manager, they all — directors and share-holders alike — were gratified to 
know that the trained sagacity with which Mr. Trevaskis had dealt in 
Broken Hill mining shares now enabled him to resume the position in 
society of which his unmerited misfortunes had previously deprived him. 
Mr. Trevaskis was about to enter Parliament once more, and his friends 
were confident that he would make his mark in politics as he had in 
raining. The tea and coffee service (of sterling Broken Hill silver, artis- 
tically relieved with Colmar gold) was a slight mark of the esteem in 
which he would be always held by those who knew him best (cheers). 


THE EOT 


WALTER BESANT’S WORKS. 


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Mr. Besant wields the wand of a wizard, let him wave it in whatever 
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There is a bluff, honest, hearty, and homely method about Mr. Besant’s 
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TALES OF TWO COUNTRIES. By Alexander Kielland. 
Translated by William Archer. An Introduction by H. H. 
Boyesen. With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. 

TEN TALES BY FRANCOIS COPPEE. Translated by Walter 
Learned. With Fifty Pen-and-ink Drawings by Albert E. 
Sterner, and an Introduction by Brander Matthews. 16mo, 
Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 

MODERN GHOSTS. Selected and Translated from the Works 
of Guy de Maupassant, Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Alex- 
ander Kielland, Leopold Kompert, Gustavo A. Becquer, 
and G. Magherini Graziani. An Introduction by George 
William Curtis. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. 

THE HOUSE BY THE MEDLAR-TREE. By Giovanni Verga. 
Translated from the Italian by Mary A. Craig. An Introduc- 
tion by W. D. Howells. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. 

PASTELS IN PROSE. (From the French.) Translated by 
Stuart Merrill. With 150 Illustrations (including Frontis- 
piece in Color) by H. W. McYickar. An Introduction by W. 
D. Howells. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 

MARIA: A South American Romance. By Jorge Isaacs. Trans- 
lated by Rollo Ogden. An Introduction by Thomas A. Jan- 
YiBTL. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. 

THE ODD NUMBER: Thirteen Tales by Guy de Maupassant. 
The Translation by Jonathan Sturges. An Introduction by 
Henry James. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. 


OTHER VOLUMES JV PREPARATION. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

8^!** The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by Harpeb & 
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0 rjii? 


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STANDARD NOVELS IN PAPER COVERS. 


i 


WILKIE COLLINS. 


\ CHARLES DICKENS. PI 

Oliver Twist (illustrated) 8vo $0 

Martin Chuzzlewit (ill’d) 8vo 1 

Old Curiosity Shop (ill’d) 8vo 

David Copperfleld (ill’d) 8vo 

Pombey and Son (ill’d) 8vo 

Nicholas Nickleby (ill’d) 8vo 

Bleak House (illustrated) 8vo 

Pickwick Papers (illustrated). .8 vo 

4to 

Little Dorrit (illustrated) 8vo 

Barnaby Rudge (illustrated). . .8vo 

A Tale of Two Cities (ill’d) 8vo 

Our Mutual Friend (ill’d) 8vo 

Christmas Stories (ill’d) 8vo 

Great Expectations (ill’d) 8vo 

The Uncommercial Traveller, Hard 
Times, and Edwin Drood (il- 
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Boz, and American Notes (il- 
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The Mudfog Papers 4to 

’Hard Times 8vo 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy 8vo 

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A Strange Story (illustrated). .8vo 

Devereux 8vo 

Godolphin 8vo 

Kenelm Chillingly 8vo 

Leila 8vo 

Night and Morning. 8vo 

Pausanias the Spartan. . .' 8vo 

The Coming Race 12mo 

The Last Days of Pompeii 8vo 

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The Pilgrims of the Rhine 8vo 

Zanoni 8vo 


f Armadale (illustrated) 8vo 

Antonina 8vo 

I Say No” 16mo 

4to 

iMy Toady’s Money .32mo 

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j Percy and the Prophet 32mo 

Poor Miss Finch (illustrated). .8vo 

The Evil Genius 12mo 

The Ghost’s Touch 12mo 

The Guilty River 12mo 

The Law and the Lady (ill’d) . .8vo 
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R. D. BLACKMORE. 

Christowell 4to 

Cradock Nowell 8vo 

Erema 8vo 

Kit and Kitty 8vo 

Lorna Doone (illustrated) 8vo 

Mary Anerley. 4to 

Springhaven (illustrated) 4to 

Tommy Upmore 16mo 

4to 

yjs VICTOR HUGO. 

“ Ninety-Three 8vo 

Toilers of the Sea .gvo 


50 

00 

75 

00 

00 

00 

00 

00 

20 

00 

00 

00 

00 

00 

00 


1 00 


00 

10 

25 

10 


60 

40 

35 

50 

25 

50 

25 

50 

25 

60 

20 

35 


60 

40 

35 

20 

25 

60 

20 

60 

25 

25 

25 

50 

35 


20 

60 

50 

35 

40 

15 

25 
35 
20 

26 
60 


CHARLES READE. PRICK 

A Perilous Secret 12mo $0 40 

Singleheart and Doubleface, &c. 

(illustrated) 4to 15 

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A Simpleton 8vo 35 

A Woman-Hater (illustrated) .. 8vo 30 

12mo 25 

Good Stories (illustrated). . . .12mo 50 

“ 4to 20 

Foul Play 8vo 30 

White Lies 8vo 30 

Peg Woffington, and Other Tales 

8vo 35 

The Jilt (illustrated) 32mo 20 

The Coming Man 32mo 20 

The Picture 16mo 15 

Jack of All Trades 16mo 15 

GEORGE ELIOT. 

Felix Holt 8 VO 50 

Middlemarch 8vo 75 

Daniel Deronda 8vo 50 

Romola (illustrated) 8vo 50 

Scenes of Clerical Life 8vo 50 

Silas Marner 12mo 25 

Adam Bede 4to 25 

Amos Barton 32mo 20 

Mr. Gilfll’s Love Story 32mo 20 

Janet’s Repentance 32mo 20 

Brother Jacob. — ^The Lifted Veil 

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WILLIAM BLACK. 

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An Adventure in Thule 4to 10 

Donald Ross of Heimra 8vo 50 

Green Pastures and Piccadilly. 8vo 50 

In Far Lochaber 8vo 40 

In Silk Attire 8vo 35 

Judith Shakespeare 4to 20 

Kilmeny 8vo 35 

Macleod of Dare (ill’d) .4to, 15 ; 8vo 60 

Madcap Violet 8vo 50 

Monarch of Mincing Lane (illus- 
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Prince Fortunatus (illustrated) 8vo 50 

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Strange Adventures of a House- 

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Sunrise 4to 20 

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Mr. Meeson’s Will 16mo 25 

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The World’s Desire 16mo 35 

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Henry Esmond 4to$0 20 

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Great Hoggarty Diamond 8vo 20 

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Pendennis (illustrated) 8vo 76 

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WALTER BESANT. 

Uncle Jack and Other Stories. 12mo 25 

All in a Garden Fair 4to 20 

Self or Bearer 4to 15 

For Faith and Freedom 8vo 50 

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The Inner House 8vo 30 

The World Went Very Well Then 

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A Sailor’s Sweetheart 4to 16 

A Sea Queen 4to 20 

A Strange Voyage 4to 20 

A Book for the Hammock 4to 20 

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An Ocean Tragedy 8vo 50 

The “ Lady Maud ” (illustrated) .4to 20 

Marooned 8vo 25 

My Danish Sweetheart (ifi’d)..8vo 60 

My Shipmate Louise 8vo 50 

In the Middle Watch 12mo 25 

Little Loo 4to 20 

On the Fo’k’sle Head 4to 15 

Voyage to the Cape 12mo 25 

Round the Galley Fire 4to 15 

The Golden Hope 4to 20 

The Frozen Pirate (illustrated) .4to 25 
Mrs. Dines’s Jewels(ifiustrated).8vo 50 

THOMAS HARDY. 

A Group of Noble Dames (illus- 
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The Woodlanders . . . .4to 20 

Fellow- Townsmen 32mo 20 

A Laodicean (illustrated) 4to 20 

Wessex Tales 8vo 30 


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